[ScotsGal]

Hi there, not sure if anyone can help or not lol.

I have a SATA HD..which until very recently was in near perfect working order.

I say near perfect as sometimes the laptop I was using froze and got diagonal lines across the screen then would crash.

I would then have to shut down and restart it multiple times.

Now, I decided to do a sytem restore to a previous time when I knew it worked..I actually ended up doing that a few times.

Eventually it quit working altogether, so the genius I was I decided to do a system recovery (minus having recovery disks..duh me!) Also there was an option to try to keep my files but I chose not to (but I know that sometimes it is still possible to restore those, as they just become hidden ones?)

So I ran that a few times, but each time it got to a certain point where it would not go beyond. (When I was entering the info to take the windows vista and reinstall it from the partition on the HD.)

I then started getting an error message saying it could not find the windows software at all.

Eventually after that I could not even get the darned thing to boot to BIOS..not even post either.

So...my question is...am I able to retrieve the files I want from this HD..or because I have done all of this so far is it near impossible to do so?

Also I noticed that a few of the pins at the connector end are either broken or bent...if I some how repair that or take out the actual diskand put that into a new cover (is that the word I'm looking for?)..will that then make it possible to retrieve the info?

[Hybr!d]

Sounds like it's pretty shot, not much you can do unless you have deep pockets.

[Rik]

Professional data recovery sounds like the only potion and that can be very expensive indeed.