SUMMARY - I did a fresh install of Win7 Pro and it now won't read one of my secondary HDDs. The HDD is recognised in the Bios and Device Manager; the HDD causes the Windows boot process to hang.
DETAILS - The drive - a Toshiba 3TB (DT01ACA300) - has been working perfectly as a secondary (non-OS file / backup storage) drive for several unstressed years.
After a fresh Win7 installation the following problems appeared. When the drive is connected (as one of four internal HDDs + 1 SSD for apps and OS), the PC will not boot into Windows, it hangs on the splash screen. When the drive is disconnected (leaving all the other disks intact), the PC boots perfectly. The bios confirms that the drive is NOT listed as a boot device in the boot sequence.
I 'hot' connected the drive (as an internal HDD, not via an external USB connection) once the PC had completed booting fully (my MB BIOS allows this). Windows Explorer did not assign a drive letter to the drive. However Device Manager correctly identified the drive and says the device is working properly. (The physical signs of a properly working HDD confirm this - the drive quietly whirrs, slightly warm to the touch etc so the drive is definitely not DOA). In Device Manager, when the drive's 'Device Properties' box is active and the 'Populate' button in 'Volumes' is clicked, nothing appears. 'Disk Management' does not register the drive.
I also tried removing the HDD from the PC and putting it in an external USB HDD caddy and connecting it to the PC. The caddy was properly recognised as an external device but not the drive.
It *seems* like the HDD is working fine physically but somehow the partioning / file structure has become corrupted so Windows can't recognise / read the disk's contents, and that the corrupted disk somehow interferes with the Windows boot process.
On this drive I have a lot of family movie files. Most - but I suspect not all (more fool me...) I have backed up to my home server. I would like to recover the files from the disk and - ideally - reformat the drive so it works properly again!
I have tried using EaseUS data recovery, PC Inspector File Recovery, MiniTool Power Data Recovery to read the disk and recover the contents but with no success - they're unable to read the disk.
Any advice on how to proceed would be much appreciated.
Thanks in advance
HalifaxPeter
CPU: Intel i7-4770K
Motherboard: ASRock Z87 Pro4
Ram: 16GB RAM
SSD/HDD: Kingston 240GB SSD (OS & apps)
2x Samsung 500GB HDD
1x WDC 1TB HDD
1x Toshiba 3TB (DT01ACA300) HDD
GPU:m/b
PSU: Antec
Chassis: Antec P120
DETAILS - The drive - a Toshiba 3TB (DT01ACA300) - has been working perfectly as a secondary (non-OS file / backup storage) drive for several unstressed years.
After a fresh Win7 installation the following problems appeared. When the drive is connected (as one of four internal HDDs + 1 SSD for apps and OS), the PC will not boot into Windows, it hangs on the splash screen. When the drive is disconnected (leaving all the other disks intact), the PC boots perfectly. The bios confirms that the drive is NOT listed as a boot device in the boot sequence.
I 'hot' connected the drive (as an internal HDD, not via an external USB connection) once the PC had completed booting fully (my MB BIOS allows this). Windows Explorer did not assign a drive letter to the drive. However Device Manager correctly identified the drive and says the device is working properly. (The physical signs of a properly working HDD confirm this - the drive quietly whirrs, slightly warm to the touch etc so the drive is definitely not DOA). In Device Manager, when the drive's 'Device Properties' box is active and the 'Populate' button in 'Volumes' is clicked, nothing appears. 'Disk Management' does not register the drive.
I also tried removing the HDD from the PC and putting it in an external USB HDD caddy and connecting it to the PC. The caddy was properly recognised as an external device but not the drive.
It *seems* like the HDD is working fine physically but somehow the partioning / file structure has become corrupted so Windows can't recognise / read the disk's contents, and that the corrupted disk somehow interferes with the Windows boot process.
On this drive I have a lot of family movie files. Most - but I suspect not all (more fool me...) I have backed up to my home server. I would like to recover the files from the disk and - ideally - reformat the drive so it works properly again!
I have tried using EaseUS data recovery, PC Inspector File Recovery, MiniTool Power Data Recovery to read the disk and recover the contents but with no success - they're unable to read the disk.
Any advice on how to proceed would be much appreciated.
Thanks in advance
HalifaxPeter
CPU: Intel i7-4770K
Motherboard: ASRock Z87 Pro4
Ram: 16GB RAM
SSD/HDD: Kingston 240GB SSD (OS & apps)
2x Samsung 500GB HDD
1x WDC 1TB HDD
1x Toshiba 3TB (DT01ACA300) HDD
GPU:m/b
PSU: Antec
Chassis: Antec P120