Help Requested Recovering Hard Disk **SOLVED**

[wardmatt]

Hey guys

Any help here really appreciated. I had a power surge which resulted in the following message when booting my PC: "No boot disk has been detected or the disk has failed". I attached the drive to a different computer and it was unreadable.

I used EaseUS Partition Recovery and successfully recovered the 2 partitions I knew to be on the disk (the OS partition and the HP recovery partition). Both of these partitions are now viewable in Windows Explorer. However, when I plug the HD back into my desk top I still get the same error: "No boot disk has been detected or the disk has failed".

Looking at the drive via Disk Management, I see that there is 229 MB of unallocated space at the start of the drive (followed by the OS partition, followed by the HP recovery partition). EaseUS Partition Recovery does not see any partitions in this unallocated space.

Is this unallocated space the reason the drive wont boot? Could someone please provide steps to get this disk bootable again?

Many, many thank for your consideration.

Matt.

 

[D_Know_WD]

Hi there wardmatt,

Well, in my view, there is something wrong with the HDD. Just attach it back to the other system and back up the data stored on the drive. After that, you can test it with some of these: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/282651-32-best-diagnostic-testing-utility
The results(SMART report) should show if there is something wrong with the drive.

Apart from that, I guess it may be a good idea to try using both different SATA and power cables when attaching the drive to your system. You can use a different port as well.

Let me know how this goes,
D_Know_WD

 

[wardmatt]

Thanks D! There is no data on the drive, but didn't want to go through the hassle of having to re-validate all my software licenses with Microsoft and Adobe! I already ran a SMART test and I also ran the built in HP diagnostics and both showed no errors on the drive. I already tried attaching the drive to a different SATA port, but I will also try different cables to see if that makes a difference.

I realized yesterday that I had not tried to repair the drive using the windows disk, but hit a problem there as my (relatively) new mobo will not activate my USB 2 keyboard and mouse (I have no PS2 port) so I can't reinstall windows either! Now investigating that problem too.

Isn't life fun!

Thanks again for taking the time to respond.

Matt.

 

[wardmatt]

So...I was able to resolve this by booting from Windows CD, selecting "Repair Computer", going to a DOS prompt and then used bootrec to repair the boot sector as described here:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/927392

In all honesty, I knew how to do this but just plain forgot!

Once I was back up and running I tested the drive using the tools suggested by D_Know_WD and everything looks good.

Thanks to all who read the post and to D_Know_WD for the post.

Matt.

 

[D_Know_WD]

It's great you've sorted this out.

Cheers,
D_Know_WD