Computer won't boot when second (corrupted) hard drive is hooked up

[ryan913]

Hi all,

So last week my hard drive got corrupted. All sorts of bad sectors appeared and then the partition disappeared. It was all bad!

I got an new replacement hard drive since the old one was still under warranty. I installed my operating system (Windows 7) on the new hard drive and booted up. Everything was working fine. My next step was to attach the old, corrupted hard drive and try to use R-Studio to see if I can salvage any data. But when I hook up the old hard drive, windows will not boot. It won't get past the splash screen.

I am not sure how to remedy this, so any help would be most welcome. I'd prefer not to have to boot from Linux as I have never done so before and think it is kind of over my head.

The hard drives are all hooked up with SATA cables, so my guess is that it is not a Master/Slave issue. Also, in the BIOS the boot order is such that the good hard drive is listed first. I'm at a loss...

Thanks so much!
Ryan

 

[Guest]

i can't tell you for sure that the corrupt drive is sending windows all flonky when it tries to read it when booting up, but i would not be surprised.
there are linux OS discs that run linux without installing it on your HD; just boot from the DVD drive.

btw, linux is EASY!

 

[HugoStiglitz]

have you tried a USB enclosure?

only connect the drive using the USB enclosure once windows is fully booted

 

[captaincharisma]

yea LINUX is easy until you have to install programs and whatnot

 

[Guest]

yea LINUX is easy until you have to install programs and whatnot

yeah like how windows 3.1 or 95 use to be

there is nothing that time and a pot of coffee won't cure in linux.
http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/installingsoftware
anyhow the OP just needs to access a drive not install an OS.

 

[ryan913]

i can't tell you for sure that the corrupt drive is sending windows all flonky when it tries to read it when booting up, but i would not be surprised.
there are linux OS discs that run linux without installing it on your HD; just boot from the DVD drive.

btw, linux is EASY!

Thanks for the replies. I'd be open to booting from a DVD. If I do that and have my data recovery software on a thumbdrive, will the linux boot recognize it and let me run it? To be honest that is all I really care about at this point. Gotta get my data! And then the follow up question is: would that linux boot allow me to move my reconstructed data from the corrupted hard drive to the good one? If all that is possible, I'd love to have a link or a name of a stable linux boot DVD...

It does still seem weird to me that the booting process just stops though. It seems there ought to be a way for it just to start normally with the attached drive.

 

[ryan913]

have you tried a USB enclosure?

only connect the drive using the USB enclosure once windows is fully booted

Thanks for the idea, you inglorious basterd

Do you have any idea about how fast an enclosure would be able to scan? I'm pretty sure that this is the kind of thing that will have to run for days once I get it going...

 

[Guest]

Thanks for the replies. I'd be open to booting from a DVD. If I do that and have my data recovery software on a thumbdrive, will the linux boot recognize it and let me run it? To be honest that is all I really care about at this point. Gotta get my data! And then the follow up question is: would that linux boot allow me to move my reconstructed data from the corrupted hard drive to the good one? If all that is possible, I'd love to have a link or a name of a stable linux boot DVD...

It does still seem weird to me that the booting process just stops though. It seems there ought to be a way for it just to start normally with the attached drive.

DOH! silly me, your data recovery software is windows based, right? excuse me for overlooking the obvious, though i am sure there are "live" CDs with such software on it.

though huogstiglitz has a great idea of a sata usb apapter. but now i am wondering if you have ahci mode enabled in your bios for your HDs if you could "hot swap" the HD after boot up . . .

 

[ryan913]

Best answer selected by ryan913.

 

[LoneRock]

Hi guys,
Thanks, an old threat but gave me some ideas.
I had the same problem with a new gbt hd after formatted it to too small clusters with some freeware. Could not get to bios or anything when it was hooked up.
So i put in windows disk, booted with old hd and after pushed 'any button to boot from cd' swapped the cable quick to the corrupted hd.
Reformatted drive but had to hit shift+f10 to get to diskpart, to make a partition to efisys.
Went to bios, selected unisomething dvd to first boot option and installed windows.
Thanks.

 

[assasinxtg]

Hi all,

So last week my hard drive got corrupted. All sorts of bad sectors appeared and then the partition disappeared. It was all bad!

I got an new replacement hard drive since the old one was still under warranty. I installed my operating system (Windows 7) on the new hard drive and booted up. Everything was working fine. My next step was to attach the old, corrupted hard drive and try to use R-Studio to see if I can salvage any data. But when I hook up the old hard drive, windows will not boot. It won't get past the splash screen.

I am not sure how to remedy this, so any help would be most welcome. I'd prefer not to have to boot from Linux as I have never done so before and think it is kind of over my head.

The hard drives are all hooked up with SATA cables, so my guess is that it is not a Master/Slave issue. Also, in the BIOS the boot order is such that the good hard drive is listed first. I'm at a loss...

Thanks so much!
Ryan

So ryan, did you get it fixed? and how...?