Hi all,

I have a 3 year old WD 320gb 2.5" hdd that I took from my old laptop and put it in my new computer to become the main system hdd.

Yesterday, it stuck at windows screen after I log in, so I force restart it.
Now, the system keep restarting and can't load windows at all.

I've tried all option in advance menu (safe mode, repair, system restore, etc) but none of it works. I even try to repair it using the Windows CD (Win 7 ultimate sp1). I've also plug the hdd to another computer and laptop hoping to recover the important files inside the hdd.

I suspect the hdd is damaged beyond my experience as when I plug it in to another computer, it hangs the computer. I've set the boot priority to the workable hdd (with window 7), but still it hangs on the windows start up. This is the strange part. I never encounter this kind of problem where a faulty hdd will make other hdd unworkable.
Please help me, to at least where I can access the hdd to recover the important files inside it.

Thank you guys in advance.

p.s: i've tried with knoppix live cd, but still fail. And the bios detect the hdd before it boot up.

I've seen this problem before:

1. Owner keeps messing with the hard drive which causes it to fail completely or be damaged further, preventing or decreasing any chance for data recovery.
2. The hard drive owner seeks professional help before creating more damage. Sometimes after messing with it.
3. Owner decides the data isn't worth the recovery price and moves on.

Usually in that order...

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Buy your friends Toshiba\Hitachi and your enemies Seagate.

I don't think I messed up with the hdd till that extent ( there's one article even suggest to put in a freezer ). I really try me best to do as delicate as I can. But I do keep restarting the computer for everytime it hangs. I've seek professional help, and hope the price is right (USD 100-200) the best that I can pay now. but nonetheless, the data inside it are to valuable for me to let it go. That's why before the quotation from the pro guys delivered to me, I'm asking any experienced user here that may have a simpler (and cheaper) solution for this case.

It is difficult to provide advice remotely without running few advanced tests to isolate the issue(s). I say this because trying a certain something, typically some king of commercial software, can lead to further damage and that's not what you want.

Regardless, the best course of action toward a successful recovery is to get the drive evaluated by a specialized data recovery company, not a common computer repair shop.

Not aware of any members here from Malaysia, so you may have to consider shipping the drive to another country.

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Hard Disk Drive (HDD), Solid State Drive (SSD, SATA, NVMe, etc), USB Flash Drive and RAID Data Recovery Specialist in Massachusetts

labtech: yup, doing that right now. don't know how long will it take for the guys to give me the quotation or do anything yet. But from the description I mention above, how come my damaged hdd effect other hdd? Like when I try with my friend computer, and it fail to boot the window from my friend hdd. That really puzzled me.

Simply because Windows persists in trying to read the damaged drive until allowing to continue the boot process from the other healthy drive. Doing this is extremelly detrimental to the failed drive.

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Hard Disk Drive (HDD), Solid State Drive (SSD, SATA, NVMe, etc), USB Flash Drive and RAID Data Recovery Specialist in Massachusetts

I'm assuming you connected using IDE or SATA cable and not USB
If this is the case, both the original drive and bad drive might have been as as primary drive (jumper setting).

So... I take it as there is no other way to recover the files without any professional help.. I thought maybe there was another way to do it..

Anyway, thanks for all the replies guys!

Just a single bad sector could cause this.
Also a trojan infection.
It needs evaluating by somebody who knows what they are doing.

You can recover data from inaccessible/dead/undetectable hard drive with the use of Hard Drive Data Recovery Applications. Once Recovery is completed, you can view restored information accordingly.