BTTFModMachine 260 Report post Posted November 14, 2012 (edited) A while ago, my hard drive crashed and wouldn't boot up. Later on, I realized that I could still recover what was left of it by making it a slave HD. I got a new one, anyway, but this might help some who have had HD crashes in the past or the future. This works on IDE (PATA) drives, but the Serial ATA (SATA) step shown below hasn't been tested. If your HD won't boot up, won't be recognized in the system BIOS, or anything else, try this method: NOTE: For SATA Drives, DO NOT remove the jumper. It could cause problems. 1. MOST IMPORTANT: Unplug the power from your computer to reduce the risk of electrical shock!!! 2. IMPORTANT: get a cable that has 2 HD connectors in it. 3. IMPORTANT: Get 2 HD's, one that is your crashed one and one that works. 4. VERY IMPORTANT: Set the jumper to the master setting usually specified on the drive cover itself (or master with slave) on the one that works. Also. set the jumper on the crashed one to slave. 5. Connect each drive to a connector on the cable and attach the end of the cable to the computer motherboard. 6. Plug the power into your computer and start it up. 7. If you are using an SATA drive, change the boot order of your drives in BIOS to make it a slave. 7. If my method works on your HD, in My Computer (or Computer), you should see 2 HD's and be able to access everything on your crashed hard drive. 8. OPTIONAL: Reformat your crashed HD after recovery to make it work again. Find and go to Disk Management*, delete the active partition on your crashed HD (WARNING! This will delete all data on the HD), Wait for it to be done, Create a partition (most users want a partition that takes up the full capacity of the HD), select the default allocation size and the type of file system (FAT32 or NTFS), tell Disk Management to format the drive after the partition, and after it is done formatting, you now have a working HD! *Try searching in Help and Support I know this works for some crashes, I've built computers up from blank HD's before and recovered data on my old HD. I also built a peer-to-peer home network server up from a recovered drive with this method. This is some of what I do in my free time. This won't work for all crashes, but it's worth a try and it is better than searching for and buying a new HD. Hope this helps! -BTTFModMachine Edited November 15, 2012 by BTTFModMachine Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
♠Grim♂ Reaper 1666◙ 17 Report post Posted November 15, 2012 its funny because i'm pretty sure one o my hard disks is going to fail at some point because the S.M.A.R.T system has failed on it i believe it is my 250gb one but i have actually stopped using that much anyway just contains mainly my old windows installation. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
uokka 117 Report post Posted November 15, 2012 If you can't boot up windows but the drive is still alive and accessible as slave, then you might just wanna try to fix the MBR (Master Boot Record) which might just has been deleted by a virus or overwritten by bad partitioning. Very easy using WinXP's recovery console (on the CD) and its a matter of seconds. I have dozends of old HDDs lying around and those that are dead (won't boot) are really dead (making klonk klonk noises). Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
♠Grim♂ Reaper 1666◙ 17 Report post Posted November 15, 2012 sometimes the problem of not booting up is simply that you make the hdd without the boot file as the first to load whch means that the computer can't find the boot loader. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
BTTFModMachine 260 Report post Posted November 15, 2012 Both of the HD's I recovered were IDE. One had a couldn't boot, the other wasn't recognized in BIOS until it was made slave. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
