With modern Dell's it's usually one of the advanced boot options you get when pressing F8 after the Dell logo appears. As to whether you can clone the recovery partition on to another HDD, I've never tried it.
Otherwise, find an OEM/multi version ISO of Windows 7 and reinstall it using the key the laptop came with.
Cheers Matt. I did look at a boot menu, F12 on this one which only showed the diagnostics. I've only ever done a full install so not used to recovery/install partitions.
Just had a look on the Dell website and it is from the F8 menu. Repair computer. That doesn't work though. It says loading files then goes back to the menu.
No. If it is trying to boot but getting stuck would that work? Worth a try. What's the other one? Might try another boot CD or putting the HDD from the laptop in my computer and see if I can scan it on there.
Then I'm guessing either the physical disk, or the partition map is hosed. All that's left is to attempt data recovery from a linux boot cd, or put it in an external enclosure and try to mount it on another pc. You could then try to reformat the disk, in my experience it is probably a waste of time.
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"Ninety percent of Americans use the Internet. The other ten percent use the banjo."
That was my guess. I did boot a random Linux live CD I had lying around and could access the pictures on there so hopefully the stuff they want I can get off.
Definitely dead HDD. I used my USB to SATA cable (with my PATA USB dock providing the power (I think I need a proper SATA dock)) and Windows immediately said there is a problem with the drive. It's trying to do a scan and just clicking every now and then. Maybe I should stop it in case I break it more.
You're unlikely to 'break it more', it's probably the/an actuator arm that's fucked (or more accurately, stuck). But it could also be the pcb is shorted somewhere. Or the partition table is so messed up it literally doesn't know where to start.
I've had some luck with getting dead drives to 'randomly' restart after repeated efforts over several days (i.e. try it ten times in a row, leave it). If you do get it to spin up, you should treat it as the likely last chance you'll ever have to recover the data.
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"Ninety percent of Americans use the Internet. The other ten percent use the banjo."
Should have said mostly dead. Or dying. The drives appear in Windows and I can browse them, get some stuff off them but there are obviously bad parts of the drive that can't be read now.
