Help - Primary Master Hard Disk Error

[salaro]

Hi

I found my 9 months old son hammering my lovely Vio with an empty cup. 10 minutes later the vio crashed and I have lost my primary master hard disk

I am going to phone sony tomorrow to get it collected. But I was wondering if anyone knows if I would be able to get my emails out of the hard drive.

The Outlook pst files were very large about 2 GB each and I had 3 of them. and that is why I never could back it up.

Also

I have a spare 80GB Samsung hard drive (brand new) for laptop, I could change the HD myself, but I dont know how to get to it?

I would be grateful for any help.

Sal

I forgot to say

This is VGN - A197VP

[rich912]

Hi Sal and welcome to Club Vaio.

Here is a link to a guide for opening the case of a Vaio A series that was produced by another member of this forum. It is not related to hard drive replacement but should give enough guidance to at least locate the drive.

Whether you will be able to retrieve any data from the old drive is doubtful. There are companies that specialize in data retrieval but I am afraid that the cost is high. Once your new drive is up and running you could try fitting the old drive in a USB caddy and try to access it.

Best of luck…

[Resonate]

It is possible to retrieve all the data on the Hard disk assuming no damage has actually come to the disk itself. It is possible to retrieve in many ways by conecting your HDD to another computer & with some great data retrieveing software about would talk you through that. It sounds as if your HDD could still be in tact with any look However i cant be sure as you dont have access.

Hopefully with any luck it might be a connection or something simple knocked out of place
KIDS WE JUST LOVE EM !!!!!

[salaro]

Many thanks Rich/Resonate

I will carefully try and see if I can change the Hard Drive myself.

And see if I can find someone professional in UK to help with retriving the data on HD.

Kind regards

Salar

[Resonate]

I will carefully try and see if I can change the Hard Drive myself.

No problem, Just be very careful when you do the amount of computer components iv screwed over the years is shocking LITERLY god i hate STATIC

Good Look Salaro & Happy New Year !!!!

[salaro]

Humm

I was doing so well in getting to the Hard Drive. and I got the keyboard out, got the screws and couple of ribbon cable out. That was very scary.

But I got stuck with not being able to get the big light grey block off the top.

I noticed the laptop shown was slightly different to mine as mine is the 17 inch version and may be it is slightly different,

It looks it needs to go first to Sony

Then the old HD goes to CBL

I found a good article here .

[Resonate]

Hey Salaro,

Just read the article on CBS, Heard it here first guys a baby is just as destructive as LIghtning, Fire & Foods I think you are right though try going to Sony first because it may be a simple factor to fix without costing you a great deal on data recovery.