Just wanted to comment on this post by Arkady : awesome tips. Keep in
mind that if you do delete and re-create the partition on the failed
drive, be sure and do a full format, and not a quick one. That way, if
it's a specific area on the drive, you could potentially work around
the bad sectors, assuming the format process finishes successfully.
Really, you might just chuck this drive once you're done with it. Smash
it up a bit, or remove the cover (as I do) and put it up on display
somewhere. You can have a "wall of shame" for failed hard drives. ;]
Arkady Renko wrote:
> xx75vulcan wrote:
> > Howdy!
> >
> > I have a 80 GB Western Digital Hard Drive running Windows XP Home
> > Edition. It recently crashed (possibly physical crash) and will not
> > load into windows.
> >
> > The Bios recognizes the disk. The Windows XP Home load screen will
> > appear, but lock and not complete the load. (I waited over 2 hours and
> > nothing happened). No errors, just won't load.
> >
> > I took out the bad drive, installed a brand new 80 GB Western Digital
> > Hard Drive and loaded a fresh copy of Windows on it (upgrading to XP
> > Professional), hoping to reconnect the bad drive as the slave, and
> > recover data through Zero Assumption Recovery program. (worked like a
> > charm when I did this a week ago to a buddy's system).
> >
> > I got the new drive (as master) to load the fresh copy of windows
> > Professional, and it works great! So I shut down the machine,
> > reconnected the bad drive as slave, (setting the jumper pins correctly)
> > and turned on the machine.
> >
> > BIOS recognizes both drives, and windows Professional starts to load
> > the new Fresh copy of Windows Professional. (after making sure the new
> > HDD was the primary boot source). However, windows Professional starts
> > to load, and then hangs.
> >
> > To make sure nothing happened to the newsly installed XP Professional
> > load, I disconnected the bad slave drive, and restarted...it loads
> > fine.
> >
> > Through HP's recovery disk, I'm getting a No Emulation from the bad
> > drive.
> >
> > How can I get into windows using the good HDD as Master, with the bad
> > slave one preventing windows from starting? (Which is odd- i never knew
> > a slave would prevent the master from loading)!
> >
> > Much thanks!
> >
> > Chris
> >
>
> An alternative option would be to grab a linux live cd (something like
> knoppix) which are generally given away free on the latest flavour of a
> local PC magazine. Boot into that and use it to recover files from your
> damaged hard drive. If you get any way through the windows bootup
> process, it sounds more like a software/os config issue than anything else.
>
> If you don't like the prospect of using linux to recover windows info,
> i'd recommend getting a copy of BartPE.
>
> http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/
>
> Once you've gotten the info you're after, boot into either environment
> and remove the afflicted partition on your old drive, create a new one
> and see how you go.
> --
> --------------------
> Arkady Renko
> Network Admin
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