Question PC wont boot after installing HDD *help needed my childhood photos are on the hdd*

[Emperor of France]

Here is my build:
I5 8400F
16GB RAM 2400Mhz
RX 6500XT
ADATA SU750 512GB SATA SSD

+500GB Seagate hard drive

I decided to buy a cheap HDD online because the storage on my pc was running out so i got a 5$ HDD online from a guy who bulks buy then sells( basically strips out old pc and sells the components). He sent a screenshot from Hard Disk Sentinel Pro and the drive is 100%, i installed the drive and there were 0 issues for a week. Then yesterday my pc randomly stopped responding so i restarted it and it got stuck on restarting . Then i force shut it down and after powering it on it got stuck on the pre BIOS loading screen ( it doesn't even got the to time when it asks you the press DEL or F2 to enter BIOS) . After some troubleshooting i found that the problem was caused by the hard drive, so I unplugged it shut it down and powered it on and everything was back to normal. So I know the problem is from the HDD. I tried different ports , different sata cables an updating my windows . The drive worked perfectly prior to this with 0 bad sectors , very quietly almost it was brand new.
I just cannot put away the HDD because I copied my childhood photos onto it before reinstalling Windows 10.There are 0 other problems on the pc
I cannot put photos here so here are the images:

https://imgur.com/a/ljvkdZw

View: https://imgur.com/gallery/ljvkdZw

 

[punkncat]

I hate that you had to find out about proper data redundancy/backups alongside only purchasing quality new storage drives for critical data...but here you are. When purchasing old used drives at ridiculously low prices, it is best they are used only for 'junk' or things that can be readily restored like your Steam library.

Probably nothing to be done aside from contacting a data recovery service and that isn't going to be cheap. Sorry you had to find out this way.

 

[ss202sl]

Hard drives fail.... and sometimes there is no warning. You will need to restore from backup onto a different drive.

 

[TerryLaze]

I decided to buy a cheap HDD online because the storage on my pc was running out so i got a 5$ HDD online from a guy who bulks buy then sells( basically strips out old pc and sells the components).

This sounds a lot like the controller board on the hdd failed with the disk itself being fine, you could message that guy and ask him for another drive with 100% the same model number.
Swap the boards and pray.

 

[stonecarver]

Here is where it can get dicey. I have had to get to bad drives with your issue where yup windows knows that drive is failing and won't boot with it connected.

Personally the first option is to send out drive and have your pictures saved from a professional.

If that is not an option I have gotten lucky by having the bad drive connected to computer with only it's SATA cable connected. Boot computer and after windows is up and running I made a custom switch that I can keep the power turned off on the drive ,than turning on the power to the drive after windows is up sometimes the drive will show up and than you can get to the data.

I have had more luck hooking drive up this way vs an external USB docking bay.

A bad drive can take a few minutes to show up or never show up at all.

If you get lucky and you get drive to boot save your data in small chunks if you try to do it all at once you blow your chance as the drive will just fail.

 

[NorbertPlays]

Another option is a USB to SATA adapter; most of them allow hot-plugging drives so you can boot into Windows and then plug the drive in - if, as others have commented, it's in a "not quite dead but not working enough to let you boot" state it may be an option. That said, if the drive has suffered some sort of mechanical failure then trying to use it may just make it worse, so it's probably worth at least reaching out to a specialist before attempting anything!

 

[Emperor of France]

Hard drives fail.... and sometimes there is no warning. You will need to restore from backup onto a different drive.

This sounds a lot like the controller board on the hdd failed with the disk itself being fine, you could message that guy and ask him for another drive with 100% the same model number.
Swap the boards and pray.

Here is where it can get dicey. I have had to get to bad drives with your issue where yup windows knows that drive is failing and won't boot with it connected.

Personally the first option is to send out drive and have your pictures saved from a professional.

If that is not an option I have gotten lucky by having the bad drive connected to computer with only it's SATA cable connected. Boot computer and after windows is up and running I made a custom switch that I can keep the power turned off on the drive ,than turning on the power to the drive after windows is up sometimes the drive will show up and than you can get to the data.

I have had more luck hooking drive up this way vs an external USB docking bay.

A bad drive can take a few minutes to show up or never show up at all.

If you get lucky and you get drive to boot save your data in small chunks if you try to do it all at once you blow your chance as the drive will just fail.

Another option is a USB to SATA adapter; most of them allow hot-plugging drives so you can boot into Windows and then plug the drive in - if, as others have commented, it's in a "not quite dead but not working enough to let you boot" state it may be an option. That said, if the drive has suffered some sort of mechanical failure then trying to use it may just make it worse, so it's probably worth at least reaching out to a specialist before attempting anything!

So the good news is that i got the important pictures on my one drive and everything is fine. Yea it seems like something on the board failed and not the magnetic disk. I have messaged the guy and i will order the sata hotboot thingy.
The interesting thing is that i got another hard drive with a lot of bad sectors and windows boots 100% fine with it

 

[fzabkar]

If the drive spins up, then the PCB is most probably OK. These drives suffer from internal faults when one or more heads become weak. The reason that the HDD hangs the boot process is that the drive remains busy doing firmware related stuff, and the BIOS stalls while waiting for it to come ready.