I recently had issues with my operating system not loading to the desktop. After a reformat, I again experienced the same issue. Troubleshooted the issue and determined I had a bad cluster in the hdd. The old Hdd is partitioned with the OS on drive C, with data stored on another partition.

My question is am I able to install the old HDD as a secondary drive? Or at the very least be able to retrieve the stored data on it

Any help would be appreciated

Thanks
Missy

Did you format old hdd and installed OS on it? is this correct?

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I did a factory restore 2 weeks ago, and it messed up again yesterday with the same issue, I spoke to a tech about it and he said it sounded like a bad cluster in HDD and instead of paying to have it fixed, I figured I could just replace it for less cost. As it sits now it has OS on C drive and the other partition is stored data (ie documents/pictures) I bought a new seagate HDD and installed OS on it, which is what I am now using. I want to see if I can salvage the data or reuse the old HDD.

If the drive still function, you may be able to connect it as the Second Hard Drive and copy the data. Please remember, if the drive has the BAD SECTORS, you may be able to copy some data but may not be all.

Data Recovery Companies have better chance pulling all if not most of your data for not too expensive right now. (If just some bad sectors with functioning heads)

Good Luck!!!

I installed the old hdd as secondary, I was able to retrieved the stored information from it.

Now is there a way I can erase the bad OS from it and use the whole HDD as storage? I tried just shrinking that partition down and reclaiming as much as I could but it would not shrink past 400gb. I was afraid to just reformat the active partition. I don't want to mess anything up.
Thanks for all the help thus far.

You can try to use MHDD to do an ERASE followed by a SCAN + REMAP

Best to disconnect the healthy drive just in case you get them confused