Adding a second hard drive causes boot failure

[Mandrew]

 My father was using his 2013 HP pavilion a few weeks ago when suddenly his hard drive failed. When he tried to boot it back up, he got a message saying "boot sector error" (or something along those lines). So I took apart the laptop and extracted the hard drive so that i could put it in a working machine so that I could get all the files off of it for him. The machine I put the hard drive in was brand new with a fresh install of windows 10 which booted fine normally, but when I added the hard drive that wouldn't boot, the computer would get stuck where it couldn't get past the bios menu loading screen or the windows loading screen (the black one with the windows logo and the spinning dots). Sometimes it would say "attempting to repair" but then the screen would go black and nothing would load, forcing me to restart it again. I messed with the boot order in the bios (it's an Asus motherboard) but nothing changed what happened when i went to boot it up. This isn't something I know a whole lot about so i was wondering of anyone knew what the problem is with the hard drive and if/how I need to fix it so that I can get the files off of it.

 

[Windows7ge]

If you're sure the computer is booting to the working drive then it's possible the sector errors on the damaged drive are preventing it from being initialized which could mess up a computers ability to boot if it's trying to spin up the second drive. It would wait indefinitely until it just hard crashes. It's not looking good to recover data by yourself.

 

If the system supports SATA hotswap then try booting into Windows then plugging in the damaged drive. This might get you into windows though there's no guarantee it'll get you into the drive.

 

Can you hear the drive spin up? Do you hear the read-head moving? I've had drives do neither.

[Eastman51]

39 minutes ago, Mandrew said:

 My father was using his 2013 HP pavilion a few weeks ago when suddenly his hard drive failed. When he tried to boot it back up, he got a message saying "boot sector error" (or something along those lines). So I took apart the laptop and extracted the hard drive so that i could put it in a working machine so that I could get all the files off of it for him. The machine I put the hard drive in was brand new with a fresh install of windows 10 which booted fine normally, but when I added the hard drive that wouldn't boot, the computer would get stuck where it couldn't get past the bios menu loading screen or the windows loading screen (the black one with the windows logo and the spinning dots). Sometimes it would say "attempting to repair" but then the screen would go black and nothing would load, forcing me to restart it again. I messed with the boot order in the bios (it's an Asus motherboard) but nothing changed what happened when i went to boot it up. This isn't something I know a whole lot about so i was wondering of anyone knew what the problem is with the hard drive and if/how I need to fix it so that I can get the files off of it.

 

Make sure the SATA ports are set to be hot swappable in BIOS. Then take the 'failed' drive out and boot normally. Once in Windows, plug the bad drive back in (system still running) and it should initialize. If it doesn't, the drive is dead for good and you can't get any files off of it without sending it to a data recovery center.

[Mandrew]

12 minutes ago, Windows7ge said:

If you're sure the computer is booting to the working drive then it's possible the sector errors on the damaged drive are preventing it from being initialized which could mess up a computers ability to boot if it's trying to spin up the second drive. It would wait indefinitely until it just hard crashes. It's not looking good to recover data by yourself.

 

If the system supports SATA hotswap then try booting into Windows then plugging in the damaged drive. This might get you into windows though there's no guarantee it'll get you into the drive.

 

Can you hear the drive spin up? Do you hear the read-head moving? I've had drives do neither.

Yes i can hear the drive spinning up, it seems like a reading error? 

 

7 minutes ago, Eastman51 said:

Make sure the SATA ports are set to be hot swappable in BIOS. Then take the 'failed' drive out and boot normally. Once in Windows, plug the bad drive back in (system still running) and it should initialize. If it doesn't, the drive is dead for good and you can't get any files off of it without sending it to a data recovery center.

I'll give the hot swapping thing a try and report back, any idea on how much data recovery services cost?

[Mandrew]

12 minutes ago, Eastman51 said:

Make sure the SATA ports are set to be hot swappable in BIOS. Then take the 'failed' drive out and boot normally. Once in Windows, plug the bad drive back in (system still running) and it should initialize. If it doesn't, the drive is dead for good and you can't get any files off of it without sending it to a data recovery center.

 

18 minutes ago, Windows7ge said:

If you're sure the computer is booting to the working drive then it's possible the sector errors on the damaged drive are preventing it from being initialized which could mess up a computers ability to boot if it's trying to spin up the second drive. It would wait indefinitely until it just hard crashes. It's not looking good to recover data by yourself.

 

If the system supports SATA hotswap then try booting into Windows then plugging in the damaged drive. This might get you into windows though there's no guarantee it'll get you into the drive.

 

Can you hear the drive spin up? Do you hear the read-head moving? I've had drives do neither.

Ok so I did the sata hotswap and i felt and heard the drive start spinning, but it did not show up in file explorer. Does that mean it's dead and I should look at data recovery services, if so what one should I use. Or are there other options i can still try myself.

[Eastman51]

3 minutes ago, Mandrew said:

I'll give the hot swapping thing a try and report back, any idea on how much data recovery services cost?

Data recovery costs usually depends on location, you'd have to look up the nearest company and see how much they charge. But I'd only take that route only if there's critically important information (i.e. Important documents/files for work, passwords). But the cautious user also backs these types of files up somewhere else, like the cloud (probably not for passwords though) or an external drive of some kind. 

[Eastman51]

Just now, Mandrew said:

 

Ok so I did the sata hotswap and i felt and heard the drive start spinning, but it did not show up in file explorer. Does that mean it's dead and I should look at data recovery services, if so what one should I use. Or are there other options i can still try myself.

I'd look in Disk Management before calling the drive dead. You can do a Google search to see if there are ways to recover data on your own

[Windows7ge]

1 minute ago, Mandrew said:

Ok so I did the sata hotswap and i felt and heard the drive start spinning, but it did not show up in file explorer. Does that mean it's dead and I should look at data recovery services, if so what one should I use. Or are there other options i can still try myself.

It not showing up doesn't mean it's dead. It may just mean hot swap isn't supported. Like Eastman51 says check Disk Management. It may show up there. If not, try rebooting. If it gets stuck again at the spinning wheel then you're probably not recovering this yourself.