Hello. My Seagate hard drive stopped booting Windows XP. When I tried placing it as a 2nd hard drive on my other (working) Windows 7 system, the BIOS immediately states that the SMART is bad, and will not load Windows 7 with this drive attached. However, the BIOS does recognize the 80GB hard drive and it sounds like it's working perfect. Since I cannot get to windows with this drive attached, I cannot load any diagnostic software. I tried using Seatools on USB, but it doesn't get too far - some errors show up, then the screen goes blank, and nothing happens. I have a picture of the screen before Seatools goes blank, if anyone thinks it might help. I'm hoping that the fact that the BIOS does recognize the drive that there is some hope to access my music folders. What should I try next? I'm thinking that maybe a dos program, or something other than windows might be the next step? Thanks everyone.
what did it start from? did you change any BIOS settings(USB 2/3 settings)? did you try other usb ports.Are there any other devices in usb ports? did you install any drivers or windows updates before the issue? What if you boot in Windows with unplugged HDD and then plug it and check by Windows app for errors or by chkdsk /f /r(but using chkdsk /f /r you should try make backup if possible) Sorry but seatools is not powerfull utility as for me.
This happened a couple of months ago, but I'm just now trying to fix it. For the Seatools USB, it loaded and started just fine, just couldn't finish. Also, I should have stated that this is a standard internal SATA hard drive. That's a good idea - I will try adding it to my windows 7 after it loads. Yes, I turned off the SMART test, but nothing changed - BIOS still recognized, but Windows 7, nor a different XP machine, would not start up with this drive attached as a 2nd drive. As soon as I unplug it from the motherboard, windows starts to load. Thanks for the help, I appreciate it.
and also try to play with usb ports. i notice weird behavior with usb ports espacially with front ones. once i couldn"t install Windows because i inserted flash drive in usb 3 port but in bios i had usb3 off(i have add-on module) and came errors all the time and after i on usb3 support it went fine. Sometime i have externall usb hdd plugged to PC and it is fine but then it just hang on at black screen if i just plug flash drive or phone or bluettoth on charge. Espacially if i use front ports. My WD Hdd works with the orignal cable only and it has 2 ends to put in PC.By the way check cable. Don"t use kind of AliExpress cheap one.And of course try your disk at other PC.....and be ready that your disc is about to .....best world.Don't make this way harder I mean backup it if you have important info before your attempts.
You can find bootable ISO image of some HDD suite like from Acronis, Paragon, Eseus. With such ISO you can format USB thumb drive with Rufus, boot from it and look what is happening on that Seagate HDD. And, BIOS recognising the HDD is not the sign of working drive. Usual strategy for recovery of data from almost dead drive is to connect it to working rig (get self-powered USB box, for example) and run special programs like GetDataBack.
and of course try your hdd on other PC and check for errors by Windows. It also can be permissions check hdd for ownership's rights. good luck.
First of all, disable SMART monitoring from the BIOS, if your motherboard has this feature. Will help along with first disk initialization. Then, if you want to rescue the data you free option is to go free open source software. There is also closed source software, but I suppose you don't want to go that route, spending money and all. Create a Linux live USB media, boot your computer from it, and maybe it will mount your disk and you will be able to copy your data. Don't, just DON'T use Seatools or /chkdsk on this drive, it will cause more problems. Depending on what your plans are, you can spend the time to diagnose the drive, see what's wrong or just save the data and be done with it. If you want to really see what's wrong with it, MHDD can help, but I warn you this is a low-level very powerful tool, just re-check what command are you willing to execute. If you want to save the data, from the live Linux you can launch TestDisk and use this utility to mount, copy your data onto another drive. My workflow goes like this First, connect the bad drive to the motherboard with SATA cable, USB is dumb and data recovery via USB is ...a joke. BIOS set to SMART disabled, no overclock, disable whatever you don't need. Bare minimum works. If it is an older motherboard, check PIO or UDMA mode set to the lowest value. Yes, sound weird and insane, but remember, a hard drive will respond slowly to normal speed and SATA low-level commands issued by the chipset. Add a second hard drive, equal or bigger in capacity. This is crucial you may have just one shot, mount the drive and copy the data. Bad disks behave weird, sometimes you can see the data, sometimes just you can't do what you want. Parted Magic live media Option one: Open the Pacman file manager, if you see the content, just copy it to the good drive. run TestDisk if the disk is not seen in the file manager. If the disk is detected by TestDisk, just follow the menu and select files and copy to the good drive. It makes sense to copy one by one, bad drives can freeze at any time, just be gentle and patient. If the disk is NOT detected, restart, boot one more time with Parted Magic and choose MHDD from the menu. MHDD can see the drive, even if it not detected in BIOS. If you have questions, we are here to help. GL.
Thanks for the replies guys. This weekend I'll make some time to continue working on it and I'll report back.
Unfortunately, this drive will not show up on a working windows (or linux) system, no matter how I install it, or even after windows has loaded. Ok, so I had to find my motherboard manual to learn about how to find the PIO and UDMA settings. While doing this I found a disk I made years ago called "Ultimate Boot CD" or something like that. Anyway, I set the PIO value to 0 (slowest) and the UDMA to it's lowest value, UDMA 0. I also disabled the SMART function on the seagate drive. Unfortunately it did not change anything. I loaded the Ultimate Boot CD and ran TestDisk, which loaded the Parted Magic software. It did not detect the Seagate drive. I then re-booted and ran the MHDD 4.6 (they did have 4.5, but I did not run that). For some reason, the cd loader opened a windows 98 startup and I had to decide on Adaptec SCSI (or something like that) and another, default setting. It would not move forward until I removed the drive. However, once it was past that point, I could then reconnect the Seagate drive and it did, indeed detected it. Unfortunately, I don't know enough about what I am looking at to be too useful, but I was able to run some diagnostics on the drive. I don't see a direct way to copy the contents of my Seagate to another drive. Any ideas where to go from here with the MHDD program? Thanks, Howard
Dimitry Postrigan, the creator of the MHDD states several times that the software itself wasn't built with the purpose of whole data recovery in mind, it is just to asses the state of the hard drive and run commands to the drive and do something. For serious problems and difficult data recovery, there are so many options but just a few are the real deal and expensive. Atola is another software made by the same author but is not free. Now, there are TOF and ATOF (more than 1 GB of data) commands which can transfer sectors to a file, and you can do something with those sectors, create an image or something. Try raising UDMA or PIO mode value by 1 increment, and after the drive is detected, with ATOF you could write the sector to files on a good drive, previously connected to the motherboard. Problem is you will need additional software to extract those sectors, create an image and get the data from it. Sorry if you feel misled or somehow swayed about the path i advise you to take, but in the end it boils down of the state of your hard drive, and even so, sometimes in data recovery is better to know when to STOP and use another tool or hand over to people who have data recovery centers with dedicated tools and software. If it is of any help, here it is the MHDD full manual. http://www.real-world-systems.com/docs/MHDD_en_manual.html
No worries. The help that you, elaganza and mbk1969 provided was far more than I could have done on my own. I was hoping the diagnostics that MHDD provided could tell me if the drive still has data accessible on it. Using the TOF and ATOF is beyond my knowledge, so I'm not going to do that. My fear is that I'll send it in to a professional and get told that it will be much more than the initial quote. I suppose I could also do the long scan that is available on the MHDD software, but again, I don't know how to interpret the results. Thanks guys for all the help.
if you have important data and couple of hundreds dollars( don't know your prices) you should go to professionals with hardware like PC-3000 plate.All other at home possibilities take a lot of time and nerves and and usially doesn"t make a profit.
and also you can try to plug your hdd in Windows and use recovery tools like Ontrack Easy Recovery(good one for me but the problem is it will be shown as kind of 001xxxxx.rar, 0002xxx.rar,00003.mp3 and so on. As for me MiniTools Software the best and last hope if i have problems with HDD and if one doens"t help then the game is over for my HDD )
