Pc wont boot with bad hard drive connected

[72010]

Hi everyone. One of my hard drives is failing and I am trying to back it up before it completely fails. However, when I plug it into my computer the computer won't boot. It will hang on the starting windows screen. The same issue happens when I try safe mode. Up until now I was able to boot and view the files.

 

[myrgatroid]

Have you installed a second hard drive on which to save the files? I would start by checking the bios for the boot order. It is possible the failing drive may have lost the boot sequence files. If that is the case, using a new primary drive to boot may help to resolve it. If you have another bootable drive on which to back up the files you could try setting the failing drive as a secondary drive; it may work that way, and then you can also back up the files you want.

Using a different drive cable to plug the drive in can sometimes change the boot order.

 

[samuria]

If the hard drive is toast it will reread all the time what ever you do dont try cloning it as that would copy bad block to any new drive. A lot of the files will be corrupted so your best bet is let check disk run it will take a long time but mark out bad blocks so after it should be better

 

[72010]

The failing hard drive was just used for storage there was never an os installed on it. It was the secondary hard drive. Its just that by physically having the hard drive plugged in prevents windows from booting even though its booting from a different ssd.

 

[SIW2]

I have come across similar. Sometimes a bad disk can prevent even getting into bios.

I dont know the answer, except sending it to specialist data recovery firm, which is expensive. If the data is very important that would be the safest course.

If the data is not vitally important, and you want to try and recover it yourself:

it might be worth trying it attached to a different machine, or alternatively maybe using a usb attached enclosure rather than the internal sata connectors would allow you to get at it.

Perhaps jumanji can suggest something else.

 

[72010]

Some good suggestions. I may try getting a USB adaptor so that I can plug it in once the PC is already running. As far as i know the data is still accessible as I had it connected to another computer abt 2 days ago and it was working, but now that PC is having the same issue with the booting.

 

[jumanji]

Hi @72010.

You can try booting into Live Linux and check whether you can recover data from the faulty HDD.

Download Lucd Puppy:
Cilck on this link to download lupu-528.005 https://distro.ibiblio.org/puppylinu...pu-528.005.iso

Create a bootable pendrive with that ISO using Rufus. Rufus - Create bootable USB drives the easy way ( You have to identify and mount your faulty drive whether it is connected internally or externally)

Boot into Linux with that pendrive.

Follow the guide here:
Lucid Puppy way to recover files from a non-bootable computer

Good luck.