When I boot with old hard drive plugged in, I get the same long message I posted earlier and its now "checking file system on D: the type of the file system is NTFS volume label is win7 one of your disks needs to be checked for consistency" Now its doing the long scan/check. I tried getting to BIOS maybe didnt hit TAB in time and got the above message.
Fix My Dead PC (local) has been recommended for me to check out if needed. Prices dont seem too bad. I've got years and years worth of pics that are priceless.
Chances are if they are recovered they won't be in order or they will lose their file names. At least when I went through this at work. hoop fam
I checked their website. They will have to outsource it to a recovery service in a clean room which is $$$ hoop fam
Why does it boot up fine without the old hard drive plugged in... but wont when it is? Doesnt the PC know to boot from the new hard drive and ignore the old/bad one?
Every repair place uses the same software by OnTrack. Most of the major hard drive manufacturers use a propitiatory version of it for their drives. Like I've said, get the software from the hard drive manufacturer and diagnose exactly what is wrong. From there you can figure out what to do and how fucked you are. It could be a bad sector(s) which with the right software the drive will stop seeking those sectors and you can recover everything but anything written on those sectors. You can get the professional version off of Piratebay but I don't think Bobo knows about Key Gens and software cracks. http://www.krollontrack.com/
If your BIOS is set to auto scan every time you plug in the old drive the BIOS puts that one as the primary drive and your new drive as the secondary drive. You need to go into the BIOS and make sure the Boot order is set to boot from the new drive first.
Any details on how to change this? I'm in the BIOS and I dont see anything about auto scan. When it boots with the new drive in, the 1st Boot Device [SATAM-WDC WD2002] is the new drive, correct? It doesnt seem to let me get to BIOS with old and new drive both plugged in.
In BIOS, without the old drive plugged in. Boot Device Priority 1st [SATA M-WDC WD2002] 2nd [ATAPI CD-ROM] 3rd [Removable Dev.]
NO! Do not do that! You can try turning off the Smart Drive setting in the BIOS when the old drive is out and then plugging the old drive back in but you've got to be careful when playing around with BIOS settings. You should probably stop.
I disabled the 2nd option because I am using the CD rom data cable for old hard drive and that still didnt work.
I'm sure you are but I have to ask, are you plugging in the data cable and the power cable to the old drive?
Even though you are booting from a different drive, all drives will be check for consistency When it finds and error on that bum drive you get a short time option to respond no to a scan of the drive which likely won't work. Get the drive out of there and use a USB external drive kit and see if you can save what you want by plugging it into a USB port after you get the system booted up.
