Recovering data from hard drive...

So my computer suffered a nasty BSoD last month which I could not recover from no matter what I did. Hard drive seemed toast, so I bought a new one. Still wouldn't work, even with the new hard drive, as it was apparently a memory issue.

So I figured, I'll buy new RAM and get the new hard drive working. Did that and I'm golden so far; got new RAM and a new hard drive. But I figured, if it wasn't a hard drive issue causing my BSoD, then my old hard drive must work fine. So I re-connected the old hard drive, making it a secondary drive, and the computer doesn't work. The Windows loading bar starts up but after that it just fades to a black screen. I can't get into Windows at all.

If I set the old hard drive by itself as the master, blue screen of death again. I had Windows 7 on the old drive, and Windows Vista on the new drive. Not sure if that matters. But is there anything I can do to recover some data from the old drive?

Eisenh0wer said:

...making it a secondary drive

Click to expand...

How, exactly, did you do that?
Is this a SATA or IDE drive?

They're both SATA. Maybe I said the wrong thing; the old hard drive is currently disconnected, and I have the computer working fine with just the new RAM and the new hard drive. However, if I hook up the old hard drive with the new hard drive as the master, I just get a black screen. Can't load Windows.

you can try to burn a live edition of ubutnu to a cd and boot that then use ubuntu to copy the data from one drive to the other.
If your motherboard supports hot swap sata then you can just boot windows then connect the drive you want to copy from.
you may also want to check your bios to see how this drive shows up according to the computer

both sata and it won't boot when both are connected. The old hd is fighting to boot from it's OS. Use the new drive to boot to windows

connect the old drive go to device mananger and scan for hardware changes. Go to My Computer and it will be there.

you can also stop that drive from being a boot drive or from the computer recognizing other instances of windows by going to msconfig and removing it that way(from the correct drive of course)

I hope this helps.

drop the drive into another computer and specify to boot from the other computers drive, then should see that drive as a secondary drive. Maybe you can recover that way. Or just do a windows repair on it and see if you can get back to normal that way

I booted up Windows with just the new drive connected. When in, I connected the old hard drive and did a scan for new hardware. Nothing was detected. It doesn't appear anywhere.

It does, however, appear in my BIOS when booting up. It appears normal - 500 GB capacity, nothing seems out of place.

I am using Vista, btw, and the motherboard is a nVidia 790i Ultra SLI (by EVGA).

right click My Computer (Computer) and click Manage
then click on disk management. See if you see some extra hard drive show up in there. Windows may treat it as un initialized if this is the case then your data may be lost but still try the ubuntu cd thing above to see if that can see your drive's data

No, doesn't show up at all even with that method. It's definitely plugged in, though, and if I shut down and start up, it will be detected in BIOS.

I'll try the Ubuntu thing later, I need to go get some blank CDs.

GIXXERGUY6 is right. When both HDDs are hooked up it is trying to boot both OS at the same time and causes it to crash. It also sounds like your sata is not hot swapable while on. Some boards do and some dont. You have tried about everything I can think of besides buying a dock for the hard drive so it can hook up usb. Cost about 20 dollars. Also you may want to try a windows repair if you have the cd for the OS on that drive.

I also have a 790i from evga and it does indeed have hotswap sata

If you are familular with imaging disks that might be the only way you are going to be able to recover your data. It sounds like the partition tables might have been corrupted (or the disk is just flat out dying) to the point where windows can no longer recognize the drive. Using a tool such as FTK imager or dd might be your only option.