Dying HDD freezing windows

Coczilla · December 18, 2017

I had a 3-TB HDD die on me. Would freeze my computer non stop when installed. Removing it fixes this. New HDD doesn't have this issue.

I tried running scandsk, to no avail via command prompt with /f command to run in full on reboot.

I would like to recover the data off this HDD. But since it freezes if I install it, how would I go about that? Most times it hangs windows up before it even loads. When it does load windows, it grinds to a complete halt just opening folders, it might resume but is super slow or freezes again. No blue screens. Sometimes makes icons not load in on desktop as well. I've reinstalled windows 8 on it, when I bought a new HDD. So is no shortcuts or folders being accessed on the failed HDD, it freezes regardless if installed it seems. Beyond opening a folder it probably tries to index the failed HDD, for the left panel.

I have not tried loading straight into DOS, which doesn't seem to be as easy as older version of windows. Would SAFE mode allow me to recover? Or do you know a program that would do this? Or any method really, thanks.

It is on my HTPC computer. Win 8.1, AMD 925 @ 3.2ghz, 8gb ram, GPU is a AMD r5 230 or similar card.

Think its worth trying it in my gaming rig? It has win10.

Any opinions or things to try will be very appreciated. Thank you.

MaxBunny · December 18, 2017

2 minutes ago, Coczilla said:

Any opinions or things to try will be very appreciated. Thank you.

https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B004K4TE5O/

Being read as a USB device instead might help your computer see it as an external drive instead of the main one. Especially if your solution was to boot them both up at the same time under SATA.

Coczilla · March 5, 2018

On 12/18/2017 at 4:09 AM, MaxBunny said:

https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B004K4TE5O/

Being read as a USB device instead might help your computer see it as an external drive instead of the main one. Especially if your solution was to boot them both up at the same time under SATA.

Just bought one and tried it. Computer will recognize the drive, I can see it. But it does not show any other data like size. Then it freezes the window if I try to open or view properties. Also freezes if I try to access it in command prompt. The freezing stops once I unplug the USB to the external drive.

Any other methods one can think of to try to access this drive? Thanks.

MaxBunny · March 5, 2018

7 minutes ago, Coczilla said:

Any other methods one can think of to try to access this drive?

If it's too broken for you to access then there are professional services that can salvage data from them. This is an expensive process though and they usually do it for corporate drives with valuable data on them (or bitcoin).

Coczilla · March 10, 2018

On 3/5/2018 at 12:06 AM, MaxBunny said:

If it's too broken for you to access then there are professional services that can salvage data from them. This is an expensive process though and they usually do it for corporate drives with valuable data on them (or bitcoin).

Well that sucks. Thanks for the help though, much appreciated.

Just find it funny. Ran same IDE HDD's for over a decade, still have 8 of them in use(just not primary use). Only 1 died on me after like 12 years a raptor 10k RPM one, which was a primary drive(which I can still access, but hangs sometimes). Seems with newer HDD's on sata, I've had 3 die on me within 4years, 2 of them died about same time but in different desktops.

I suppose on that note, there is a reason they sell drives meant for different tasks these days. One can't just buy the fastest one like old days and expect long life. Probably going to look into specific task oriented HDD's for the future or RAID mirror storage.