Question Can a Damaged or Dead HDD harm my system??

[Joseph_Tech]

So I have this really old HDD that my mom gave me and she said she wants me to take off the important pictures she has on it. But I think it might be dead. I have a SATA to USB adapter but when I hooked it up nothing, no detection, I don't even think it spun. It might be my adapter idk. So I want to just plug it into my MOBO and see if that works. But there are some things I am uncertain of. 1. it has an OS on it. Can it interfere with my main boot drive? 2. can it somehow damage any of my components?

 

[OwenTheGamer]

It shouldn’t interfere with your main boot drive and it will not damage your components.

 

[Joseph_Tech]

It shouldn’t interfere with your main boot drive and it will not damage your components.

All right then. Thanks for replying Owen. You really helped me out here.

 

[OwenTheGamer]

No problem. Glad I could help!

 

[Karadjgne]

Before trying to access the drive, I'd suggest you (Windows key + R), in the run box type cmd (hit enter). At the prompt type drive letter colon (eg. D: ) (hit enter) . Then type cd\ (hit enter). Then type chkdsk /f (hit enter).

If there is errors on the disk, such as bad sectors etc, that'll find/repair/quarantine them so that any data that's there will be recoverable. If there is corrupted data, that's unavoidable, but there won't be any further corruption of any other data, so photos will be as safe as possible to recover.

 

[Joseph_Tech]

Before trying to access the drive, I'd suggest you (Windows key + R), in the run box type cmd (hit enter). At the prompt type drive letter colon (eg. D: ) (hit enter) . Then type cd\ (hit enter). Then type chkdsk /f (hit enter).

If there is errors on the disk, such as bad sectors etc, that'll find/repair/quarantine them so that any data that's there will be recoverable. If there is corrupted data, that's unavoidable, but there won't be any further corruption of any other data, so photos will be as safe as possible to recover.

I tried this it said (
Access Denied as you do not have sufficient privileges or
the disk may be locked by another process.
You have to invoke this utility running in elevated mode
and make sure the disk is unlocked.)