Question Failing HDD Backup

[acryaz]

Hi I have a friends HDD here, a 1 TB Toshiba

he was getting the SMART Failure imminent error message on boot, I’m trying to boot windows setup from an external just to be able to open notepad to copy his files from it as he has work on there he needs, however, I’ve disabled SMART and I still can’t get it to boot from my external, the BIOS sees the HDD but I get as far as the blue windows install screen, with mouse support but has no user interface so I can’t get to notepad, I’ve honestly tried anything, so basically I can’t get windows to boot even from my SSD with this faulty hard drive plugged in and SMART turned off, I’m out of ideas, any suggestions

 

[USAFRet]

Booting from an external is a whole different thing. That is a fail point all by itself. Windows does NOT do this natively.

Try booting from a Linux USB, and see if you can recover the required data.

 

[USAFRet]

But if you're trying to boot from a Windows install USB, and you still can't see it, the Linux option won't help.

You've left it too long before preparing for the inevitable drive fail.

 

[RolandJS]

Agreed, without prior backups, data recovery will be almost nil And, the more DIY, the more a professional DR will have to do and charge.