[SOLVED] Can I save my hard drive?

[gorbagov577]

After coming back from an extended break without my PC, I have come back to my PC refusing to boot unless it has one of the hard drives removed. Plugging the hard drive in before the boot, it's impossible to get my PC working, plugging it in after boot, it just refuses to show. I was wondering if it would be possible to try to at best, recover the hard drives data, at worst make the drive usable again.

I had an idea to buy an adaptor and connect the hard drive to my PC with it acting like an external hard drive, but wasn't sure that this would work, considering it doesnt even show up after boot.

Help would be appreciated.

Thanks.

 

[Lafong]

I assume the PC works fine if the defective drive is not connected.

Normally, I would expect a dead drive to have no effect on an otherwise working PC because some other drive contained the OS.

What does this dead drive contain?

When was the last time everything was OK and has the PC simply been powered off with no one accessing it since that date?

Have you tried connecting the dead drive to some other port on the motherboard or used different cables?

 

[gorbagov577]

I assume the PC works fine if the defective drive is not connected.

Normally, I would expect a dead drive to have no effect on an otherwise working PC because some other drive contained the OS.

What does this dead drive contain?

When was the last time everything was OK and has the PC simply been powered off with no one accessing it since that date?

Have you tried connecting the dead drive to some other port on the motherboard or used different cables?

1. PC boots fine without it, using it right now to type this out.
2. A bit of everything, some replacable, some not
3. Late December, shut down properly then turned off at the wall, hasn't been touched since a couple days ago

4.Tried connecting it using other sata and power cables and it didnt work

 

[Lafong]

I guess this is a traditional hard drive. Does it make any noise at all (spinning platters) or is it totally silent?


"A little bit of everything".........would include installed applications and possibly Windows components. Do you mean it's purely data like pictures, recipes, video clips, mp3s, etc

"hasn't been touched since a couple of days ago".....I assume you are touching it now?

Do you mean it wasn't touched from late December UNTIL a couple of days ago?

I'd like to know exactly what happened during and immediately after the first restart following the December shut down. The PC would not boot on that first attempt?

Has the PC had any interaction with Windows Update since December?

Do you have access to any other PC to see what would happen if the drive were connected to it?

 

[gorbagov577]

I'm sure it has windows bits on it somewhere but its not a boot drive and hasn't been for some while. It was working for at least 2+ years without the 'dead' drive being a boot drive. But its most data.

Like I said, im using the PC right now to type this out. I removed the hard drive and the windows auto repair took its course, letting me use the PC normally after the repair.

I'm the only one that has access to the room that the PC is in and I have been in another city since late december. It has had 0 power to the machine until a few days ago when I powered it on and went through the repair process. Initially on first boot up the device could not find a boot drive, after that, the PC then couldnt repair, getting stuck on the windows logo infinitely.

It has had 0 interactions with windows updates, the only other machine I have access to is a Laptop that cannot take the 3.5" drive.

 

[Lafong]

I guess this is a traditional hard drive. Does it make any noise at all (spinning platters) or is it totally silent?

Not sure why a good working PC would want do a Windows repair on first boot after having been shut down for a few weeks.

 

[gorbagov577]

Yes, it spins up and makes regular hard drive spinny noises.

 

[Lafong]

I'm guessing the problem is because there are some confusion or identification issues concerning boot partition, active partition, and system partition that were caused by the repair.

I'd further guess that back in November or early December when all was well, that your "dead" drive did in fact have at least 1 Windows partition on it and that the PC used that partition when booting. That partition is likely still there and creates confusion when that drive is connected.

I'm nearly positive it is correctable, but I'm not qualified. You probably have to get access to that partition on the "dead" drive and either delete it or mark it in some way that makes it inert to remove the confusion.

Possible tools would include Diskpart (built into Windows) or something like Minitool Partition Wizard, a free third party tool.

All the above is guesswork and I leave open the possibility that all hope is lost and that you'll never recover anything on the drive or get it working.

Good luck. Maybe someone else can help.

 

[gorbagov577]

Okay, a quick update. I've managed to boot with the drive plugged in. I went into the BIOS and found that it had the name of the drive and "Windows Boot Manager", it must have been trying to use the drive to help boot. I stuck it at the back of the boot order after some waiting, it finally booted up properly.

Looking at file explorer, the drive was appearing but had no indication of its capacity or used storage. From here I went into Disk Management and Minitool Partition Wizard and found some interesting partitions. If anybody has any idea what I can do from here, it would be much appreciated.

Disk Management:

300MB - Healthy (Recovery Partition)
260MB - Unallocated
(F: ) 922.25GB RAW - Healthy (Basic Data Partition)
451MB - Healthy (Recovery Partition)
350MB - Healthy (Recovery Partition)
7.81GB - Healthy (Recovery Partition)

MPW:

*:Windows RE tools 300MB
*: 260MB
*:128MB
F: 922.24GB
*:451MB
*:350MB
*:Recovery Image 7.81GB

 

[Lafong]

Screen shots of Disk Management MIGHT help........but RAW is a word you never want to see regarding partitions.

Do you see any indication in Disk Management or elsewhere that that big F partition contains anything or has a certain percentage occupied?

Good job playing around in the BIOS and finding Boot Manager settings.

It may just be a lost partition that is recoverable and that the files are still there if the partition can be recovered. That's tricky and beyond my skill level.

If the partition can't be recovered, then you'd be reduced to individual file recovery, which is usually spotty and may require considerable dollars. Some free tools can do a modest job of it if it comes to that.

 

[gorbagov577]

MPW has it down as 72% used.

I've scanned some other areas using the data recovery tool on MPW and they seem have lost files which i can view in a folder tree.

Also scanned the partitions and getting block errors in some of them.

 

[Lafong]

Here’s some notes I made to myself years ago regarding recovery. Taken from an experienced person who is NOT a data recovery professional.



USE AT YOUR OWN RISK. I can’t vouch for it.

First move should be to try to recover the partition itself. If it is recoverable, the data should be.

Start with free MiniTools Partition Wizard Home Edition.

Select Partition Recovery Wizard. Choose the drive, then full disk, quick scan. Quick Scan may take 5 or more hours.

If the partition is found select and double click on it. Should see all files in the Explorer.

If not found, presumably do a full scan rather than quick scan.

Close the Partition Explorer and click on Finish.

The Main Screen will show the restored Drive but may be without a drive letter.

Right click on the drive, click on Change letter and give a drive letter.

Click on Apply to execute the two pending operations.

The partition is restored and your drive will be functional as before and you can access the files and folders.

If Partition Recovery is successful, Partition Wizard will rewrite the partition table in the first sector and then you will be able to access all the data as before.

Hope that Partition Wizard does not show “bad disk” under the file system column in early stages before any scanning. A typical disk with a lost partition will instead show as either “unallocated” or “RAW”, which is usually fixable easily and means only that the first sector on the drive has been corrupted. “Bad disk” points to something other than a mere partition issue—hardware per se, and may require professional data recovery services.

The general recommendation is that if a Quick Scan fails to show the partitions, run a Full Scan. One is a Fast Sweep and the other is a sector by sector read to ascertain the beginning of a partition if a fast Sweep somehow fails to identify the beginning of the partition. So far I have not come across a case where a Quick Scan failed.

For data recovery if the partition cannot be recovered:

Try PhotoRec - which is absolutely safe since there is no way you can write to the disk even by mistake. It has no “write” command.

http://www.sevenforums.com/software/193467-guide-using-photorec-recovery-software.html

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec

Ontrack EasyRecovery Professional from Kroll is quite good, but the demo version will only show you what files it can recover. You have to then pay circa $79 for the Home version. Advantage is that the left side pane will show you the recoverable files.

http://www.krollontrack.com/software/free-downloads/

Recuva is another possible choice for data recovery.

 

[falcon291]

Is it an external or internal drive?

If it is internal, you need professional help to save the data. It depends on the error, how much it will cost, it will not be cheap, and it can be very expensive.

If it is an external disk, you can open the case, and check if it has SATA ports, sometimes USB-SATA interface might be the reason of the problem, and getting rid of the USB interface and directly connecting it to your mainboards SATA drive may solve the problem.

In any case I don't recommend continuing to use the hard disk, if somehow the problem is resolved.