CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

Where's your backup? From the original drive, have you called around your local area for recovery services, maybe even the Geek Squad at Best Buy, as one place to start?

Papou Loc: Ottawa, Canada

Everything was backup except photo from our latest trip.... which were going to be edited in the upcoming days before the unfortunate event....

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Well, not sure that it’s the HD that was damaged (but a decent guess). How damaged depends on what the HD was “doing” when you dropped it. Most Laptops spin down the HD when not actively in use (to save battery life), and if that was the case and the head was parked, it might be able to be recovered (but at a substantial cost). On the other hand, if it was spinning and in the middle of a read or worse, a write, the prognosis is worse. What type of error do you get when you try to start it now? Anything? Can you feel the drive spin up if you lay your hand on the case?

My suggestion is to try the SSD route. If that’s successful, I would probably buy an inexpensive external USB connected enclosure and try the HD with it connected to your old machine and see if your machine mounts the drive and can read it (it won’t matter about Windows being bad because you’ll be running off the SSD) If you can “see” the HD, then try to copy data off of it ASAP. If you get an error, try to run chkdsk (or another disk recovery Ap) on the drive and see if that fixes it. If you can’t see it or still get an error, you’ll still have the external drive enclosure which you can use on any machine and then decide if the data is valuable enough to send it to a recovery service. Just what I would do in your case.

Papou Loc: Ottawa, Canada

Here's the message that I get

Smart hard drive error

Imminent failure. Please do a back up and run the Hard disk Test in system Diagnostics.

Hard disk 1 (301)
F2 system diagnostics
enter continue start up - but nothing going if doing so.

Regards

Eric

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Yep, sounds like the fall crashed or damaged the HD. My advice on investing in an SSD replacement and reinstalling Windows and whatever aps you regularly use stands. Since you have a backup of most of your data, it may not make economic sense to try to recover the HD, but I would hold my hand on the laptop to see if it is spinning. If so, check back if you decide to put in an external case, and we can discuss steps you might take. If not and the connector is tight when you remove it, toss it unless you’re willing to spend big $ on recovery. If you are VERY lucky, it could have become loosened from the connector during the fall, and you can remove and reseat it and try again - it’s a no cost (but low probability) “fix”. The fact that the BIOS was able to apparently read the SMART data is interesting, but that may just be the default if it can’t find the SMART data.

Papou Loc: Ottawa, Canada

Open it once again and checked every connections... nothing loose.

Intel I5 7th generation
1000G - 5400
8 Ram - upgradable since there is a dual slot (one empty)

The screen seems ok but again, no way of knowing for sur since no windows to make sure.

Eric

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

I would try to save that with a 1 TB SSD. You will be AMAZED how much faster it is. You may find that the SSD (plus maybe adding another 8GB DRAM) makes it perfectly usable for almost all tasks. No sense tossing perfectly usable machines…

Papou Loc: Ottawa, Canada

Do you think it would run Luminar 3 properly or any other photo editing program smothly ?

And thank you so much for you time and knowledge.

Eric

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Since I don’t run Luminar, I can’t say for sure. The weakness in general with older machines is not the CPU, but the lack of a separate GPU or not enough VRAM on the existing card. Even given that, I was successfully running LR/PS 2022 and Topaz products on a 3rd generation I-5K CPU until I built a new machine. Granted, I wasn’t doing anything GPU intensive such as stacking or expecting changes in Topaz AI aps to happen in real-time, but it wasn’t dog slow. Why not try it and see? The worst that happens is you have a 1TB SSD if something else is broken that you can use as external storage on a new machine, or you have an extra slower machine you can use for backup.

Papou Loc: Ottawa, Canada

Will order ssd drive and extra gig from Amazon and start from there. Could use it for my golf simulator.

Eric

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Maybe start with the SSD and make sure it’s operational before adding the DRAM (which you may not need for running a single non photo editing application)

Papou Loc: Ottawa, Canada

Best buy or Amazon for the ssd ? Any brand makers suggestions ?

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

I would suggest a 1TB Samsung 870 EVO 2.5” SATA SSD usually ~$99 at either Amazon or BB. Before ordering, remove the old HD and check the size and thickness to make sure it’s a 2.5” and the thickness. Typically just plug and play, but worth checking. Here’s an article on the swap procedure: https://www.laptopmag.com/articles/ssd-upgrade-tutorial