Hard drive prevents windows from starting?

[lou4uandme]

Hi all,

Ok, i woke up this morning to the dreaded BLUE SCREEN.
When I tried to restart, windows 7 just hanged but never started.

I Tried:
Safemode, but it never booted
Repair mode, but in never booted to the repair screen
Used Install win 7 disk, windows disk never booted all the way.

So I bought another HD and reinstalled win 7.
I then plugged in 4 other hard drives which ALL WORKS BEAUTIFUL
THEN....I tried to add that corrupted HD. As soon as I plugged it in, (as a storage drive) windows just hanged. I unplugged it, and windows started right up.
I plugged it in again, windows hanged. I unplugged it, and win 7 started up. (ok you get the picture)

So of course I have important data that I need on this disk, and I am tring to find a way to retrieve the data.

Can someone make some suggestions for me to get some data off this freaking drive?

Thanks,
Lou

 

[Robert17]

Plug it in (leaving your newer drive with the OS in as well), boot to BIOS, make the newer drive your first boot drive; once the PC boots to Win7, copy the data off the older 'bad' drive onto whatever you like. You can leave the older drive in the machine if it is readable and just use it for a data storage drive. Be sure to run a CHKDSK on it, maybe defrag it as well.

 

[lou4uandme]

Well yeah, that was my plan but like i said, the minute I add the corrupted drive to the system, it prevents the GOOD drive from booting up. I made sure that the BAD drive was NOT booting as an OS (just additional storage) but for some reason, when the drive gets connected to the motherboard, it stops ANYTHING from booting. (repair mode, safe mode, system win7 USB) they all will not boot if I have this Hard drive connected.
It is driving me NUTS!

You would think that if the drive was Bad, it simply would not show up in windows but it actually stops everything else from booting as well

 

[Robert17]

List your system specs, go from there.

 

[lou4uandme]

MB Gigabyte h87-d3h -UEFI bios
16 gig ram
i7 4930K
seagate 1 Tb hard drives (4) (c, d e f)
------------------------------------------
Fun facts:
The minute I plug in that corrupted HD to any open sata port, it makes my new win 7 lag at the "starting windows" screen

I un plug it, and windows 7 starts right up.

 

[Zuzzz]

Sounds like a serious issue with that drive. You could try the old 'freezer' trick. You might get enough life out of the drive to save your data. But from the sounds of things the drive is dead.


Z

 

[lou4uandme]

Ok well before I went to bed, i added the drive to the system (storage only-no boot)
And of course windows 7 just hanged at "STARTING WINDOWS"
But this time, I left itand went to bed. I woke up and windows was up & running.
So I copied that drive as fast as I could. Now I am running error checks.

Thanks for the input

 

[Zuzzz]

WOW That's great !!!!!! Im so happy you got your data. I would still replace the drive ASAP. But alas the data is safe. Well done

Z

 

[lou4uandme]

Ha, well I kind of got it back.
I started to copy the important folders to my other drive. After I did that, I tried to fix the drive by Properties/ tools/ error checking. After it finished, it said something like " Windows has to unmount the drive before fixing errors"
So whatever it did, all I get now is the drive letter but I can't access it nor does it show any color bar (free space)
I also tried to go to MANAGE/ disk manager but nothing shows up. All it said was "Starting virtual disk imaging" but no drives show up

I should have copied the whole drive before trying to fix it.
Oh well, live & learn

 

[Wathnix]

you could try plugging it in to a USB enclosure

 

[lou4uandme]

Do you mean like an external usb drive? I have a usb drive that broke and I took it apart. But the Hd is a laptop size drive. My sata desktop won't connect to it.
I saw a cable tha has a usb on one side and a sata on the other. If all else fails, I might go buy it

 

[HankB]

I saw a cable tha has a usb on one side and a sata on the other. If all else fails, I might go buy it

I have one of those which has a laptop like power supply and a cable that can attach to 2.5" and 3.5" PATA drives and any SATA drive. I suppose the PATA option is less useful these days but it is pretty useful when I want to temporarily connect a drive to another PC.

Since it is a Seagate drive, I would find the diagnostic program on the Seagate site and check your drive with it. It might provide useful info since the drive seems not to be working now. I'd do that before you disconnect it from SATA as that will probably provide better diagnostics.

I wish you better luck than me! My 2TB drive has now accumulated over 600 remapped sectors and occasionally no longer boots the PC.
Seagate (Linux) diagnostics report no errors and as of July it is out of warranty.