Windows won't finish booting with bad HDD (non boot drive)

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CdrCain

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Sep 22, 2011
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I use a desktop PC with Windows 7 64-bit and 3 HDDs. 2 of them are IDEs (a 80GB and a 160GB) and the other is a SATA (1TB). I boot off of the 80GB while the 1TB houses most of my games and video files. My 1TB SATA has now failed but I'm not exactly sure what is wrong with it so I am unsure how to go about trying to recover the data.

Here's what happened: my windows boot time has been pretty long lately but just a few days ago it got absolutely awful (like almost 5 minutes at one point). I thought I was dealing with a virus (malware, etc...,) because I was getting redirected a lot while browsing the web and my PC seemed sluggish. I was going to run an overnight scan but I kept forgetting. I also thought I was having issues with one of my games because it kept stuttering and locking up for about a minute every so often (this only started happening a few weeks ago but two days ago it became concerning with its frequency). I was playing the game yesterday and I minimized it to look at a youtube video and my PC froze while watching it. I figured it had just locked up from being overloaded (old PC, not great at multitasking) so I decided to give it a few mins. It came back after about 3 mins but locked up during the video again about 2 mins later. I let it sit again and it came back. This time I closed the video (thinking that I might be trying to do too much at once) but a few mins later it froze completely and never came back.

I rebooted and everything seemed fine until I tried to play that game again (which runs from the 1TB and was still running when my PC locked up) and it failed to load because the HDD it was on couldn't be seen anymore.

What I tried:
-Different SATA port on motherboard
Result: Windows booted with a very long load time. Drive showed up but couldn't be read at all. This only worked the first time so I'm assuming it was a random occurrence.
-Using drive on different PC
Result: Windows will not boot past the black screen with the windows logo on it. It just hangs there. It has eventually gone to a completely black screen if left long enough (5-10 mins).
-Booting in safe mode
Hangs at the end of the boot sequence (when all the text is scrolling by saying what its loading, I forgot what line it got stuck on exactly though).
-Booting without the drive
-Everything works normally.

It is hit or miss if my PC sees it or not but now what happens is if my PC sees it (shows up during POST) it will hang on the black screen with the windows logo and never progress past this point. If it doesn't see it then it will load normally.

This whole thing confuses me because if I'm booting off a different drive then I don't understand why having a bad HDD (that isn't a boot drive) will prevent windows from completely booting. I'm leaning away from it being physically broken because it spins up just fine and sounds normal (no weird clicks or anything) but I am unsure. If its not a physical problem I want to try and run a recovery program but I can't use any because whenever my PC sees the drive it never finishes booting.

Any ideas on what might be wrong and how to go about recovering the data? I really just want it to see the drive again in windows (even if it can't read it) so I can try a recovery program but I only got it to do that once at the very beginning and I'm worried I missed my chance. Also, sorry for the full story but I wanted to make sure I gave you guys as much info as possible as to what’s going on with it.
 
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SoundS like the hard drive controller failed and it hanging the Sata bus.
You can try plugging the drive data cable in after the pc post and try running hd tune or a vendor test tool. Also google your drive part number and see if has firmware issue with bricking the drive. Some seagates had bad firmware where the drive just bricked itself after a set amount of time.
 
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A bad HD can do that, even if it's not the boot drive as Windows still has to install drivers, check that the drivers started, get a response back from the drive to read it's partition table, assign a drive letter, etc. I've had this happen before.

the best thing you try to do would be to buy a USB to SATA adapter, boot up without the drive, connect it USB so it pops up, then try and access/recover it.

Other option is try to boot it without the drive, then hot plug it in to the SATA once windows is up, scan for hardware changes and see if it picks up. This is hit and and miss and you can fry the drive, so I don't recommend this or take any responsibility for it, but I've done it before on my own drives.
 
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There's clearly an issue with the 1TB drive if you can't boot any computer with it attached. It also sounds like you beat the heck out of the pc by having multiple windows and programs running at the same time. There's plenty of tips you can use to make the computer more responsive. If the computer froze during the game, it probably messed up your save, so you'll probably have to load the save prior and play forward.

how many processes are running after you get to the desktop - without you running a program?
have you run CCleaner?

-----

wow - we all were typing our responses at the same time...

I have this dock and it works perfectly - http://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-eSATA-Drive-Docking-Station/dp/B001IOPIRM/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1371147883&sr=8-5&keywords=drive+dock
 
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Thanks for all the fast responses everybody. Those are some good ideas to try out. I'll give them a shot and let you know. I'll have to wait on testing the USB cable idea because I don't think I have one lying around.
 
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I don't beat the heck out of it as bad as it sounds. I have an old Core duo 2 with 4GBs of ram but it doesn't usually like having games minimized while I try to run other processes and can lag quite a bit so I usually avoid that. I was minimizing my game to put on some new music (but got distracted with vid) when it locked up.

At this point I'd be more than happy to go back to a previous save lol seeing as how almost all my game content was on that drive. I was actually playing a Steam game so I'm hoping some of my files were cloud saved but thats minor to me at this point and the performance issue isn't my primary concern at this point but if I kept it to only one or intensive programs at once I'm usually ok. I rarely have issues running a single program.

EDIT: To add insult to injury I was looking up getting an extrenal HDD for backups that same day because I don't have another drive big enough to back up all the files on it and I was thinking "I should really get an external so I can back up this drive because if I lose it I lose everything" and was pricing out drives 30 mins before it died.

 
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Tried doing it after the POST and it doesn't see it (it locked up one time as I tried to do it as well). I tried hot plugging it in after Windows booted but it doesn't see it and none of the programs can detect it. I looked into the Firmware issue and I don't think that is the case. My version is part of the 7600.12 and the problems occured a lot with the 7600.11 and I couldn't find anyone complaining about my versions firmware. I also have had it for over 3 years now so if it was a firmware issue it took a long time to take effect for me.

Tried hot plugging it and it scanning for it after and nothing came up. Drive still seems ok though as I'm getting the same results as before.


Looks like this is my only option at this point, unless you guys have more ideas. Going to order an adapter off Amazon/Newegg and give it a shot. Thanks for the help so far and here's hoping.
 
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Alright so I have a USB converter and I plug it in after my PC boots. It sees the drive but can't access it (because its bad of course) and then I try and run a recovery program. Here's where I'm having another problem. I have two seperate programs trying to look at the drive and both of them get hung up. The recovery program clears checking IDE and SATA drives but hangs on "USB: Scanning for supported devices" and I have another program so I can see the exact health of the drive. It loads fine and I can pick the drives from a list (it sees the bad HDD) but when I try to bring up the bad HDD's info it also hangs. I'm fresh out of ideas now :/
 
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