Acer laptop I think I wrecked (I know)

[Glioma]

PLEASE HELP!!!!! I took a hard drive out from an Acer laptop running Win 8. I connected it to my Lenovo running windows 7 (64) bit. I just wanted to copy some information over and then do a factory reset on my Acer. After connecting, I couldn't see anything on my Win 7, so I checked and it showed my (Acer) HDD as unallocated. So I put it back in the Acer, no luck. It wouldn't load. I searched online for hours. Including these forums. Tried every variation suggested.

Finally came across this Acer website, where the person said to install a password in the bios, reset the computer and I could load Windows. Once I did that, the computer locked. I used the code (1111) so it would be super easy, but now, I can't access anything. No bios, no boot, and on top of that, my HDD is still unallocated. Short of taking a hammer to the Acer, is there anything I can do? Any help is appreciated. Thanks in advance.

 

[basroil]

Does your laptop have RAID 0 enabled by any chance? If so, you needed both disks to have it work.

At this point the only hope you have is to use data recovery software (even something like recuva) through your working computer, and then completely reset your laptop. Once your data is backed up (or you confirmed that there is nothing left to back up), you can reset the bios by using the clear cmos jumper, and hopefully that will reset the bios. If it doesn't, you'll have to RMA.

 

[Glioma]

Does your laptop have RAID 0 enabled by any chance? If so, you needed both disks to have it work.

At this point the only hope you have is to use data recovery software (even something like recuva) through your working computer, and then completely reset your laptop. Once your data is backed up (or you confirmed that there is nothing left to back up), you can reset the bios by using the clear cmos jumper, and hopefully that will reset the bios. If it doesn't, you'll have to RMA.

Thanks for the help. No, I dont have raid. I spent some time taking the laptop apart, removed the battery and the passwords have been erased. The hard drive is still unallocated. I was trying to avoid using a software to recover the information because the current hard drive is partitioned into a factory reset and the actual install. I just wanted to know if I could get the hard drive back to normal, copy the data and then just do a fresh install. I don't have a Win 8 home CD, so now I have to worry about that too. Any ideas?

 

[basroil]

If the disk doesn't fix itself, most likely the file table/record is corrupted to the point of being broken, and the only real option is to recover using recovery software. It'll take longer, but if you are lucky the software may be able to recover parts of the table to speed things up.

As for windows 8 install, just use the media creation tool http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-8/create-reset-refresh-media .

 

[Glioma]

If the disk doesn't fix itself, most likely the file table/record is corrupted to the point of being broken, and the only real option is to recover using recovery software. It'll take longer, but if you are lucky the software may be able to recover parts of the table to speed things up.

As for windows 8 install, just use the media creation tool http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-8/create-reset-refresh-media .

Thanks for the help, I started a Win 8 download. I guess I can always use Hiren and do a recover afterwards and see what I can save. Appreciate the help in either case.

 

[basroil]

Do NOT recover after installing an OS. First recover, then reinstall.