I hope someone can give me an idea what the problem is and what I might be able to do about this...
In my self built pc I have 2 IDE drives (one of which is the boot drive) and 3 SATA drives that are data drives. One of these data drives is a WD5000AAKS which is only about a year old. No problems with it, no noises etc.
PC (Running XP Pro) started to lock up occasionally over a 2 - 3 day period then would not boot past the windows logon screen. Again this is not the boot drive. With this drive removed it boots fine. Have connected it to other SATA connectors on MB same result. Also installed in another PC and it also will not boot with this drive connected. I need to get the data off of it.

Thanks for any help with this.

Does BIOS id the drive properly? Did u try connecting through SATA to USB dock? Iv seen drives that would hang the post yet ID using USB caddy and in some cases u can just get ur data. Windows requeres a lot of song and dance from the HDD to perform. Ur problem might be bad sectors on the drive. If the problem is not very bad u can try imaging the bad drive onto a good one. Id suggest imaging backwards. Might be week heads , wich is 99% non DIYable and imaging the drive most likely will worsen the condition. Need proper diagnostics.

I have seen this one too with the PCB over heating on these drives. WD is not the best drive in the entire world. I would do as Alexii says and try and use a USB dock for the drive and see if you can clone it. Then RMA this drive I think it has 2 years warrenty on it. Next time stay away from WD and try to go with Hitachi or Samsung on this one.

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Iorana Haraharaini

A data drive causing Windows to 'hang' during boot is usually NTFS / Logfile corruption on the data drive
(hangs when it is trying to mount the ntfs data drive)

It might even have gone physically read-only, which again will stop ntfs mounting it
[I've seen this several times]

Windows 7 should be able to mount it ok (as it is both better at fixing it up, and supports RO drives)

Else boot a DOS / Linux based CD and use a disk editor to temporaily change the partition ID on the data drive to something like 77, so it doesnt mount
(and also to see if you can read and write to the physical sectors)

Will still need to image or scan the drive to recover your data

Thank you all for the replies. I will try and get my hands on an external HD and see if it will work via USB. Also my grandson's laptop has windows 7 so maybe the combo will have success.
Even though I have built several PC's I'm not really very techy. I guess I need to find out what "mounting" involves. I am unsure why a data drive would cause the c drive problems when booting. I guess the MB must need some signal as it detects components and something is getting scrambled in the process and preventing XP from starting regardless of which drive it's on.

My locking up problem was not during start up and was only very seldom over a few days , no noises or any signs of a problem. I put in password, get the next screen then a very brief blue screen msg then endless restart ie start normally, start using last known config etc. take out the drive boots fine. So I will try what has been suggested.
I read somewhere that you can replace circuit board from an identical drive. Was wondering if problem might lie there or if anyone knows if that is a possible solution.
Thanks again.

Sorry forgot to mention ...The BIOS does NOT see the drive. Doubt that the BIOS itself is a prob cuz it detects other drives fine and this one too until now, also other pc has same problem with this drive connected. So I'm pretty sure it is something with this drive.

If your BIOS does not see the drive, it is the drive that is the problem in almost every case. It is unusual (but not unheard of) that the boot process is affected though.

If you could not power the system on with the drive attached, that would be one thing, but the fact that you can get to the BIOS screen rules that out. This doesn't leave you with many options in the way of repairing the problem yourself, regardless of the OS you use. Time for professional help on this one I believe.

Agreed with above. If BIOS does no see the drive - the problem unfortunately went beyond easy DIY recovery methods (most likely). At this point proper diagnostics are needed. Does the drive spin fine ? Does it click ( even ever so faint ) Does it do a little calibrating dance properly at the power up. I would suggest giving it to a data recovery shop for an evaluation ( preferably the one that does the diagnostics in front of u and dont charge for it) and see what they have to say.

I got an external hard drive enclosure and since connects via USB it is hot swappable.
After windows boots up fully I connect this and computer would detect the device but
if it did see a drive said there was an error ..... this happened several times. I gave up for a few days tried to read up on some stuff blah blah...I never knew the HD was such a complicated device.
Anyway I connected it an hour ago and it showed up!
Now I am almost afraid to do anything in case it gets worse.
It disappears and reappears. Some files I have copied off one at a time. Some times I get 99% of a file copied then it stops and gives me an error msg can't copy file wrong path etc.
Other times it copies ok. I have about 450G to get off of it still. I tried to use check disc but it could not complete..no elaboration.
I have a Western Digital Lifeguard Diagnostic program but it says disc SMART says is healthy good etc. I have a Seagate 500 G drive as well that I could empty to make room.
Would it be advisable to clone the WD to it?
Is there some way to see what errors are on it and repair damaged sectors like check disc is supposed to do?
Asfar as the disappearing act goes ...the length of time it stays available varys. When there is a problem copying a file it disappears, then shows back up a fI got an external hard drive enclosure and since connects via USB it is hot swappable.
After windows boots up fully I connect this and computer would detect the device but
if it did see a drive said there was an error ..... this happened several times. I gave up for a few days tried to read up on some stuff blah blah...I never knew the HD was such a complicated device.
Anyway I connected it an hour ago and it showed up!
Now I am almost afraid to do anything in case it gets worse.
It disappears and reappears. Some files I have copied off one at a time. Some times I get 99% of a file copied then it stops and gives me an error msg can't copy file wrong path etc.
Other times it copies ok. I have about 450G to get off of it still. I tried to use check disc but it could not complete..no elaboration.
I have a Western Digital Lifeguard Diagnostic program but it says disc SMART says is healthy good etc. I have a Seagate 500 G drive as well that I could empty to make room.
Would it be advisable to clone the WD to it?
Is there some way to see what errors are on it and repair damaged sectors like check disc is supposed to do?ew seconds later.
Some times when a file is copying it will start off saying 60 seconds remaining then increase to 9 minutes then 3 minutes 5 minutes 30 seconds etc before finally copying . Some files just copy like normal tho.
I sure could use some help on what I should do next .
Thanks again for all the replies!

You can try and clone this drive to another one. A lot of time in this case you need a tool like Deepspar or Data Extractor to be able to send signals of hard and soft reset to the HDD during cloning so that you can clone your drive. If you have problems and it is basically what you are saying and not too much more on this one. You should be able to have a good DR company clone this drive for you at a reasonable price. That is if there is no other actual problems physical with it. Good luck'

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Iorana Haraharaini