Hello, I have an Asus a6 3420m laptop, running Windows 7 only on it. I have completely encrypted my hard drive this summer, using truecrypt 7.1a. I haven't had any problems since today. The short story is, my computer just froze today, Windows wouldn't respond to anything - screen suddenly went blank. I waited for a couple of seconds, hoping it would come back to life - but nothing happened. So, I've pressed and held on to the power button until my computer shut down. I've than started it again, only to notice that I get a "No bootable device found" error. My BIOS also does not seem to recognize my hard drive any longer. It shows nothing. I did switch my hard drive into another laptop, only to see that it isn't recognized at all. I've played with the options from the TC Recovery disk, only to see the same error again and again "No bootable device found". What could be the problem ? What should I do ? Please advice, and feel free to ask for any additional info. Thank you, and please help me.
I am not an expert, but I think that the problem you should solve first is about seeing the hdd in bios. No matter what system file you have on a hdd it should be visible in bios, if it was until now. Even if the partition it's damaged beyond repair the hdd should be visible in bios. Seeing the hdd there it's a matter of electronics, not about partitions, truecrypt and other things related with os. I said "if it was visible until now", because on some old mainboards with sata drives the hdd it's not visible inside bios, just for 2 seconds in the post screen just before booting occurs. If it was visible until now there are big chances that your hdd is broken. Try it with another cable ide/sata and maybe another power line. The best option is to try the hdd on another computer and check if it is visible in bios. Try to keep your hand on it to feel if it is spinning and gets warm. Maybe it makes some strange sounds. If yes, check this website http://datacent.com/hard_drive_sounds.php
Thank you for the reply. My hdd is warming up when powering my laptop, it also makes reading sounds when booting up. I did install it on another laptot but didn't manage to boot it. What should I do next ? Thank you.
Try to use the second computer differently than you posted. Hopefully the second computer will also have TC installed on it; but if not no problem because you can run TC in portable mode. TC is designed to open another disk via the TC control panel of computer 2 (assuming the disk/hardware is working) on a windows system. You will see the option and try to open the drive IF you can see it in the TC panel. Another idea: grab a bootable partition manager such as "partition wizard" (FREE software) and then mount it in RAM on the trouble computer. That tool should see the C drive hardware even though it won't be able to recognize a filesystem due to encryption. You can run it bootable DVR standalone in RAM. Kid simple to use. This would enable you to know if the harddrive is even "there" computer-wise. If you see it you will not be able to do anything with the encrypted drive (via partition wizard) except blow it all away and start over with partitioning. If the drive is there stop without writing to it and go back to my first suggestion. Once and if you get the OS open on computer 2, you may be able to do AntiVirus remedies, or some other things to get the system disk working again. ***** With the OS open via computer 2 you will have access to any important files such as Desktop, Documents, etc.... Before doing anything at all copy those off to another media such as flash drives, computer 2, etc.... Anything you can't afford to lose should be copied before you do ANYTHING AT ALL. ***** Have you by chance done a bios upgrade recently? Have you never done a bios upgrade and you are several behind? Both things to consider.
Palancar, I deeply appreciate your reply and your time. So, I'll rewrite the steps that I have taken these past days trying to recover the data from my hard drive. I did mount the drive on a second laptop, the BIOS didn't recognize anything - it was as if I didn't have any hard drive connected to my computer. I booted the laptop using Ubuntu through an USB, again - no luck, no hard drive found. I did buy a HDD Enclosure, installed my apparently broken hdd to it and connected the HDD Enclosure to 2 different laptops - again, no luck. No matter what I do, it's as if there is no hard drive connected to my computer. It doesn't sound like something mechanical, since it spins up fairly quick, and it makes the exact same sounds like from the time it was fine. I thought the HDD Enclosure would help me recover my data, but I cannot make it visible - I cannot access the hard drive at all. Any other advice would be much appreciated. Thank you guys.
You haven't named the manufacturer of the disk but most major ones offer a program to analyze their disks. I'm not sure that the program would work if the drive isn't visible in BIOS on any of your systems. More than likely the drive is useless even though it makes a noise that sounds normal. Buy a new drive, check that it's visible in BIOS, etc. and restore your backup image to it. You'll have lost everything since the image was made.
