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Hard Drive failure during making USB-bootable Windows 7, DRMK error
My system is Dell Inspiron 17R SE (7720)
1 TB Hard Disk 5400 rpm + 32 GB mSATA, 8 GB RAM, 3rd Gen i7
I was trying to make a bootable USB flash drive for windows 7 from Windows 7 Home Premium Reinstall disk that came with my Dell laptop, using the WinToFlash utility. But in starting the process, the PC froze, all applications (even explorer.exe) stopped, and Alt+Ctrl+Del refused to work. I turned the laptop off and back on, where it refused to even show the OS list and showed a DRMK message instead with a command prompt C:\> as:
Loading DRMK V8.00...
DRMK Version 8.00
COMMAND.COM Build 37 - Jul 28, 2008
DRMK KERNEL Build 15 - Aug 8, 2008
Copyright (c) 2006-2008 Dell Inc. All rights reserved.
C:\>
I tried booting from Windows 7 reinstall DVD but none of the repair options worked. I tried reinstall and repair options but my Hard Drive did not show up. It rather asked to Load Drivers for the Hard Disk. However, it did show any of the USB drives I connected to it, along with an X: drive, which must be the recovery drive for Dell's factory restore. I tried looking for Hard Disk drivers in that but no luck.
Then I downloaded from another PC a USB utility for Seagate Hard Drives from Dell website that makes a bootable USB. I ran that utility and it showed all the test passed (But there was no firmware update during the tests)
Another thing i tried was using list disk command on command prompt in Windows Repair, but It did not show any drives, not even the X: drive. It only showed the USB drives I attached to it, or the DVD drive in list volume command.
I cannot boot to windows, I cannot install new windows, I cannot repair the windows and I cannot even factory restore my laptop.
The hard drive shows up in BIOS, but not in Windows Boot or Windows Installation.
Is there any way I can get my Hard Disk back without losing data? I have two partitions of that drive. I don't care about formatting C: Drive (Windows) but I wanna preserve E: Drive (the one filled with personal data but no programs)
Please help and explain what is happening here.