Is there anything I can use to get into dead HDD

[RussCampbell]

My girlfriends Toshiba died because while running defrag, she accidentally unplugged AC adapter, battery ran down and every off. Now it won't boot, says PXE error, I assume because HDD is no longer bootable. I tried WD lifeguard, and every program I could find on the web, including easus. Back in the old days 80's, as long as HDD was not physically damaged, it was easy to Fdisk, or format, etc. It seems I have been out of the loop for so long that there is software on the drive now that I know nothing about.  I really don;t think the drive is physically damaged because all I was, was power off wrong. Any ideas? I am thinking maybe if I can get it to boot off something else, I could try to use a new UBCD on my external enclosure to try to fix old drive, But ?????

[moon1 · Accepted solution]

hi, i dont know if you are familiar with ubuntu, if you get ahold with a live cd from ubuntu you should be able to boot up from the cd and ubuntu has a powerfull formater, you can get ubuntu in, www.ubuntu.com

also as ubuntu is an os that will boot directly from the cd, you should be able to mount the internal device and see the info, even transfering to an external, of course, that is IF it mounts

[RussCampbell]

Thank You very much for your quick reply. I have tried everything else I could find on the net, this sounds as though it might work. I assume if it does not then I will be buying a new drive. Thanks.

[Bill_S]

If you were defragging it, you most likely blew out the partition. Did  you look to see if the drive shows up in Disk Management?  Also, is it a WD internal drive?  If so, you should be able to use DLG Diagnostics and do a write zeros on the drive.  Just go to our downloads page for the utility.