Windows 7: Need to recover data from a Bad Sata Hard Disk

Hi,

Recently my 320GB Seagate Hard Disk faced a problem and had to be replaced.

Am running Windows 7 x64 on my new 1TB WD Hard Disk. However, there was some important and slightly sensitive data that I still want to recover from my old Sata Hard Disk.

Chronology of events before replacement:

Mid-July: Hard Disk was working fine. I had to go out of town for a month. PC was not being used during that period.
Aug 11- I returned home, but PC refused to boot. Even the BIOS screen or the name of the motherboard does not appear. Just a blank screen. After a couple of hours of replugging in all the hardware and power cables, the PC booted and worked normally.
Aug17- PC refused to boot, repeated the same procedure of unplugging the hardware etc but this time i noticed that one of the connectors of my hard disk appeared slightly chipped off at the edge (cant remember if its the power connector or the sata connector). PC worked normally after a couple of hours of playing around with the hardware.
Aug 18- PC was freezing, every mouse click was taking a couple of minutes to respond. I tried rebooting but the faced the same problem as the previous two times. Unplugged the HardDisk and used an old IDE hard disk to figure out if its indeed the hard disks problem. The old IDE hard disk worked.

I went and purchased a new SATA hard disk which works fine now, absolutely no issues.
But i wanted some of my data from the old disk, so I tried connecting the old Hard Disk back but cant get it to boot at all.
Most of the time, it does not even give the start up "BEEP" sound which my motherboard usually makes on boot. But after several attempts I could reach the BIOS part, but after that instead of loading windows it just reaches a blank screen with an Underscore flashing on the top left of the screen.

Also tried using the SATA as a secondary storage to my other IDE (old) hard disk. Strangely, my IDE is not loading windows either. After the BIOS screen, it says "failed to read from the boot device"

Is there anyway I can recover the data from my old SATA?

Partition Wizard Bootable CD allows user to manage partition directly with partition manager bootable CD.
Free download Magic Partition Manager Software, partition magic alternative, free partition magic, partition magic Windows 7 and server partition software - Partition Wizard Online (last one "bootable CD"). Download it and burn it. Boot from DVD. Does it see the SATA-disk? Does it see all partitions?

I would say your best bet is to plug it into your computer internally and try to read from it then. Use software like recuva, or any other data recovery software. Only use such software if the data is not visible when the hard drive is plugged Into the computer.


I wish you the best of luck!

Umm, I am not sure if i follow.
My old Sata already has an OS loaded. Can you explain how that partition thingy would help my situation? Am not sure i understood.

Yes, when my PC boots correctly, it detects the Sata-disk. One time, I tried re-installing Windows 7 on that old Sata with a bootable Windows 7 Disc. It detected all the partitions on the hard disk but the installation was wayyyyyyyy too slow and completed just 11% after a couple of hours. So i aborted it and got the new hard disk the same day.

Thanks for the tip.
However the trouble is, my PC does not boot when i plug that old Sata in.

Boot form partition wizard bootable CD. Does it see SATA drive and its partitions?

Hi
Really apologize for the late reply.

I downloaded and burned partition wizard on a CD. This was a week ago and it didnt even reach the bios screen when i restarted my pc with my old Hard Disk.

Then I borrowed a friend's old mother board and after I was done assembling the rest of the components to it, i noticed the plug that leads into my SMPS was burnt on 1 of its pin. The plastic was melted and stuck onto my SMPS pins.
I got a new power cable and put together my motherboard again but didnt boot bios again.
Then i replaced the smps ... and still didnt boot. So i finally called a local computer engineer, and took over my PC to him. Within seconds the PC booted. I got it back home and it worked for me too.
Next morning, same old story. No bios screen.

I reassembled all components again etc etc and i was using my old SATA Hard disk so all the constant rebooting does not corrupt my new SATA. Then after a little fight with my graphic card in my PCI-e, the PC booted, my old Sata worked perfectly fine. I took all my backups in any case and switched back to my new hard disk. Now i have an extra hard disk with me

So i guess this incident blew a huge hole into my original query. Although ill never find out what exactly was causing it. Im sure it wasnt as simple as giving my graphic card an extra push. I removed and re-inserted everything on my mumboard several times. And several times i tried booting it with just the RAM inserted.
I even suspected the burnt out cable and the SMPS, but in spite of replacing both of these, the problem repeated the next day.
Whatever it was, seems to have been taken care of (hope i am not jinxing it)

Anyways, as usual i appreciate the help i receive on this forum. Have a great day.

unbelievable luck. I really jinxed it.

Minutes after i wrote that post. My PC froze and it seemed like 15 days ago all over again. I gave it 5 minutes to respond but instead it restarted and did not reach Bios again.
I rebooted manually and it reached bios but said insert boot device and press any key. Rebooted again and it didn't detect my Hard Disk at all in bios.

I removed the sata cables and put them back in and it started working. Event Viewer shows no errors except (system was shut down unexpectedly).

This is altogether a new problem, since earlier my bios never showed up on reboot. This time it did, but failed to detect Hard Disk.

Ive waited enough days for my pc to act up again. Its working good now.
Thank you both for your time.