HDD problem mainly but...

[Tygron]

I have three drives in my computer. One Samsung 840 Pro SSD as a boot drive, and two 1TB WD Caviar Black's. One of those HDD's used to be my old boot drive, still has residual Windows files on it and also houses my Steam library as well as pictures and music and everything important to me. The other HDD is mainly a drive to dump video from Shadowplay.

Last week or so I restarted my computer because a couple programs were acting wonky as they had done before and I knew restarting my computer would help, there were also some Windows updates I was putting off installing.

Restarted my computer to have everything operate extremely slowly for really no reason whatsoever. I also noticed my main HDD was showing as empty. Restarting again and my PC couldn't find the drive. Restarting again and I start to get bootmanager is missing messages and eventually just have to reinstall Windows. After that I noticed that drive still wasn't showing and I had to make Windows see it manually in Disk management. It still showed as empty. So I downloaded some software, Recouva from Piriform (mostly cause it's free and I trust them... and I don't really know of any other software out there so I don't know who's a reputable company or not), and ended up seeing my files on there like I expected.

 

I ended up getting a WD 1TB passport external drive to recover the data to, hoping that since Recouva could see most of the file paths for the files (some were just wherever) it would dump everything into different folders and such on that drive. Unfortunately that wasn't the case and it dumped the almost full 1TB drive onto my external drive. Going through 1TB of files to try to get the things I want off of it is kinda... impossible to say the least.

 

I then remembered there is another HDD from an older PC (was an old Acer Aspire I started my custom build with. Slowly replaced parts until I had my own full rig) that has most of the files I want to keep on there. So I tried it and for some reason it just won't do anything but power on. It won't show the BIOS screen, won't boot, in fact it didn't even bother talking to the monitor to say anything was happening. It also won't shut off by holding the power button, I had to unplug it. This confuses me as last time I turned it on to make sure i'd put it back together properly it was fine. But that was also months ago.

 

So I tried putting the drive into my PC to get the files off of it. It's got a full install of Vista on that drive and upon doing so... well... not my PC doesn't boot properly and I have to manually select the SSD in the BIOS and I never could get it to boot at all with the drive in my PC.

 

 

So here's the solutions i'm looking for.

I need to get these files. There's pictures and stuff on there I don't want to loose. I can't just have the software just dump every image file from the drive to somewhere because that's still too much to go through. And there's other files I want too.

I would like to get that other PC running as well because the mobo still has and IDE connector on it and the power supply a Molex. I would like those to I can use another unrelated HDD in my PS2, and it would be nice to be able to put files onto it from there but that's not the prime focus here.

I just need these files, I haven't reformatted anything yet and I plan on doing that when I get everything I want in a safe place. It looks like I need to reinstall Windows again and so I will be doing that after all of this. I just would really like to get this done sooner than later because i'm tired of only having Quake Live to play. x.x

[Pugs501]

Please do a TL;DR

[Internstarz]

Sounds like you've tried a bunch of different things, so I'll spare you the endless hours of troubleshooting.

 

You need to buy a PATA / SATA to USB adapter. It'll hook on to your HDD and get power from the wall and it will also have a USB cable you can plug into your computer. Because USB is hot swap-able, you can plug it in once you get everything booted up the right way.

 

Let me know how it goes.

 

Cheers.

[R2D2_WD]

Hi there,

 

I have seen some cases like yours after Windows updates or because of corrupted files. Is your PC running normally now? I mean, except from the empty HDD issue.

Have you tried to scan the drive for errors with the Windows software? Check if the files are not hidden. Sometimes after OS updates, some settings may be changed. I would run Scandisk. Some users report that the attrib command from cmd works. You should check attrib -h -r -s /s /d z:\*.* where z stands for your HDD letter. I would try the chkdsk /r command too.

You can run the WD diagnostics software on the HDD to be sure the drive is OK. I leave you a link below.

Is your old drive spinning? Are you sure it is working and usable? If so, you can really try with a SATA to USB when the OS has already booted.

Try your HDD (with the missing folders) on another PC. Sometimes using Linux Live CD may help too.

 

http://www.sevenforums.com/installation-setup/153309-hdd-shows-up-shows-data-no-folders-files-visible.html – I would check this thread

http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=810&sid=3〈=en – Data Lifeguard Diagnostics for Windows

 

Hope this helps

[Tygron]

Hi there,

 

I have seen some cases like yours after Windows updates or because of corrupted files. Is your PC running normally now? I mean, except from the empty HDD issue.

Have you tried to scan the drive for errors with the Windows software? Check if the files are not hidden. Sometimes after OS updates, some settings may be changed. I would run Scandisk. Some users report that the attrib command from cmd works. You should check attrib -h -r -s /s /d z:\*.* where z stands for your HDD letter. I would try the chkdsk /r command too.

You can run the WD diagnostics software on the HDD to be sure the drive is OK. I leave you a link below.

Is your old drive spinning? Are you sure it is working and usable? If so, you can really try with a SATA to USB when the OS has already booted.

Try your HDD (with the missing folders) on another PC. Sometimes using Linux Live CD may help too.

 

http://www.sevenforums.com/installation-setup/153309-hdd-shows-up-shows-data-no-folders-files-visible.html – I would check this thread

http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=810&sid=3〈=en – Data Lifeguard Diagnostics for Windows

 

Hope this helps

I'll check some of that stuff out, but to answer your questions.

I haven't scanned the drive for errors, and the files do not seem to be hidden. The drive shows through windows as empty (and after looking again) it looks as if Windows decided to put a bootmgr file there. So files can be written to the drive just fine it seems, but whatever is needed on the drive to tell the OS "this is where this is on the disc" has gone missing.

 

The drive is spinning yes, and i'll have to get a SATA to USB cable to try that out as that's currently the only thing I haven't tried.

 

Unfortunately the only other PC I can use it on is the Acer and I can't get that PC to do anything. It doesn't seem to be HDD related for that one, i'm afraid the mobo might be shot. And i'm gonna be pretty sad if it is, as I was really excited to use the IDE capabilities it has onboard for that drive I want to stick into my PS2.

 

So i'll try the chkdsk stuff and the diagnostic, but it's looking like i'm going to have to just wait until I can get me that SATA to USB cable to get the files off of the Acer's HDD. It doesn't have everything on it but, it has most of the things I want to save, and that'll do. I just wish i'd gotten on getting a backup drive sooner. But after this is all said and done that's what i'm turning that WD Passport into for sure.

 

To clear up any confusion i'm primarilly talking about 3 different HDD's here

The WD Caviar black in my system that has lost the information to tell my PC where things are on the disc.

The one from the Acer PC that has most of the things I want to save on there.

And some old IDE thing I got from somewhere that I want to stick into my PS2 and isn't really relevant here for the main problem, I just mentioned it along with the problem I had with the whole Acer PC because the Acer's motherboard still has an IDE connector (cause they used an IDE disc drive) and a Molex plug from the PSU. I honestly don't know if that drive even still works or how big it even is. I think I got it from school a long while back because they were getting rid of stuff and I asked if I could have one.

 

Thanks a bunch man, i'll let you know what happens after I try these things.

 

 

EDIT: After running the WD diagnostics software the drive passed the quick test, going to go ahead and run the extended test to see what it says there. And cool I can write zeros to the drive this way. Will definitely use that if I ever get rid of these drives. But i'm running it several times, and doing other stuff to make sure everything's gone. Just to be safe Cool.

 

And thank you too, i'll let you know how that works once I can get that going.