How to recover data from hard drive detected by BIOS but not in Windows

[chacol]

I have two hard drives that are kind of dead, the one does not appear in the BIOS or Windows, however the other one is detected in BIOS.

Is there any way possible to transfer files off of the hard drive without accessing it in Windows?

 

[D_Know_WD]

Hi there chacol,

It is possible that there is something physically wrong with the drive. In that case, you will not be able to recover the data using software tools.
Have you tried something simple as just attaching the drive with different cables to a different port?(even to a different system) It will not hurt to try that.

Apart from this, if the drive is recognized by BIOS but not Disk Management, I guess you can try some data recovery tool for DOS mode. There are quite a lot of threads on that in the forum.

Cheers,
D_Know_WD

 

[Rabmac]

You can try an Ubuntu Live CD.

1. Burn the CD from Ubuntu website.

2. Boot into Ubuntu using the Live CD

3. Try and access the drive now.

I have had success with this method on a number of occasions but it really depends on what is wrong with the drive and how badly damaged it is. For future reference, it is always a good idea to have all your important data backed up at least on 1 other device, preferably 2. At times like this it makes things so much simpler.