[SOLVED] Boot from previous corrupted hard drive

[Prorex0]

Basically my original hard drive just crashed one day and I am not able to boot from it anymore, I only had 1 SATA cable so I booted windows 10 from a USB and it recognized my original hard drive as a external hard drive, the windows folder in that hard drive is completely corrupted its just some 0kb file. I was wondering if there is a way for me to install windows 10 onto that hard drive again without losing any files and start using it like normal.

Thank you for your help.

 

[mdd1963]

Not sure how just WIndows folder could ever suddenly be 0 KB, but, it sure won't hurt to try a 'repair install/keep data'...; but if you can read the drive (minus WIndows), I'd get what you can, photos/docs, etc., off while you can, put them to another USB flash drive if necessary....

(Naturally, if the drive has partially crashed, it'll likely hard fail within a week's time, so, I'd prioritize in getting your data off vice running any detailed surface checks/scans, etc..)

You might also want to pull Smart data from drive in question...; CrystalDiskInfo gives a nice color coded table/chart, not hard to grasp...

 

[USAFRet]

without losing any files

The only potentially safe way to do this is to copy all your data off to some other drive first. If possible.
Until you do that, the more you mess with this drive reduces the possibility of keeping your personal data.