Attempting to recover Windows 7 on my Toshiba Laptop
- When you run Netbootin, it will ask for the distribution that you want to put on the USB, or the ISO itself.
- In the distribution list, select Ubuntu (either 32 or 64 bit, no, it does not have to be ubuntu, but its just my preference), and download it. Make sure the right drive is selected (the USB that you want to write the data to
- after the data has been written, shut down your computer, insert the USB, and when you restart, I believe you hit F12 to get to the boot order.
- Select the USB
- Follow the ubuntu setup, its pretty straightforward, dont parition anything, just run it as a Live CD (it might be called a live USB, not sure)
- When you are done with the 'install' See if you can see any of the files on the hard drive, or if Gparted can see the hard drive. If the answer is yes, your HD is probably fine. If not, its probably busted.
- Please comment back here if there are any issues.
The unit has a recovery partition, pretty much all laptops sold now have a recovery partition. Hold down the 0 key on the Toshiba BIOS screen, it should boot into the Toshiba Recovery Wizard. Once you have gotten the system back up and running, I would recommend burning the recovery media, so that if the hard drive does fail, you have a copy.
https://www.csd.toshiba.com/cgi-bin/tais/support/jsp/bulletinDetail.jsp?soid=2737864&pf=true
Please note that UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME does not automatically mean a bad hard drive, it could be a corrupt file system, bad memory, etc.
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-system/unmountablebootvolume-windows-7-laptop-will-not/5751bfc9-bfc9-4751-b5d9-d5818905a8f5
Once you get everything backup and running make sure you burn recovery media:
https://www.csd.toshiba.com/cgi-bin/tais/support/jsp/bulletinDetail.jsp?soid=2753749&pf=true