how do I recover data from a non responsive hard drive?

OK, If you are prepared for another hour, Close Windows Disk Management and boot Partition Wizard from the pen drive again and post the screenshot of the main screen.

too late for me... but the screen caps in post #67 and 68 show the latest from the last time I booted from the pen drive.

if you want me to re-do it again, I'll do it in the morning.

thanks again for you help

OK, I want to see the snapshot in PW after you changed the active Flag. Do it tom morning. Good night.

here's those screen caps...

OK, I am a bit relieved.

I don't want you to run Quick Scan.

Can you confirm that the first screen as soon as you open Partition Wizard, shows all the partitions on your Disk2.?

jumanji said:

OK, I am a bit relieved.

I don't want you to run Quick Scan.

Can you confirm that the first screen as soon as you open Partition Wizard, shows all the partitions on your Disk2.?

yes, as seen in the screen cap, before running any scans, all partitions are shown for disk 2, as well I can double click on them and they show the folders as seen in previous screen caps.

Ok that is fine.

Now I don't know why Partition Wizard run from Windows shows it as a bad disk. It really rattled me.

As you said with the drive connected you are still unable to boot faster and Disk Management still slow even after removing the active Flag. Actually whether the first primary partition is active or inactive on the external drive does not matter at all. We just made it inactive hoping that it may make your Windows booting faster. But that did not happen.

PW run from the pen drive shows all partitions. Why is it showing as a bad drive in Windows?

Let me wait and see what Slartybart and Anshad have to say. As you have seen, the data is all there. So don't worry.

Worst comes to worst, we can run Test Disk and try to copy all data to another external drive. But I am looking to restore the drive as it is and access the data.

Let me also think and come back after about eight hours of sleep. Anyway I can sleep peacefully, knowing that it is not really a bad disk.

Thanks Slarty.

The OP has one Primary partition and eight logical in the extended partition. So it is MBR. Moreover if a GPT drive, PW will show the partitions as GPT(Data Partition) under Type. ( I am also learning as you question what I had overlooked.)

I woke up this morning with a nasty feeling. That nasty feeling is that the OP's drive may be slowly developing more and more bad sectors.Second OP's Windows may not be in its best health and safety mechanisms that Windows should exhibit have failed or failing.May be right , may be wrong.,partly right, partly wrong but that's my instinct and shall err on the safe side..

So my first instruction to the OP:

Shut down the computer, pull out the data cable and power cable from the problem drive and let it rest, till we decide what next to do.The OP can use his computer with his system drive powered.

Initially I planned to do a rebuild MBR running PW in Windows but now abandoned that and go whole hog with data recovery.

I shall be back after an hour or two.