Hard drive from computer that had blue screen.

ZacAtac26

Commendable
Apr 3, 2016
1
0
1,510
My friends windows XP computer got the blue screen and it says there is a hardware failure. It turned out to be the harddrive. They want me to recover any data from the hard drive. When i plug it in to my computer it shows up As Drive ( I: ) or whatever and doesn't show the storage space. Whenever i try to click on the drive or right click my windows explorer freezes. I try to go to disc manager as well and that freezes when searching for the drive. It loads fine until the drive is added. On the xp machine i tried loading safe mode and that also resulted in a blue screen. Any help to get into the drive would be appreciated.

The drive is a seagate and i tried their disc repair tool and it doesn't see the drive
 
Solution
Welcome to Tom's Hardware, Zac!

I'd recommend you to try using a different USB cable with the HDD if it's external or a different SATA cable if it's internal. Unfortunately, if it affects the system that way, you might be dealing with a failed hard drive.
I suppose it's internal, so you should maybe try to plug it externally via a SATA-to-USB cable with an AC adapter or a docking station. This will allow your system to boot up properly and you might get a chance to troubleshoot the problematic hard drive.
I'd strongly recommend you to consider a professional data recovery company for assistance. They are you best bet on retrieving those files from the HDD. Third-party recovery tools could help but first you should test the...
Welcome to Tom's Hardware, Zac!

I'd recommend you to try using a different USB cable with the HDD if it's external or a different SATA cable if it's internal. Unfortunately, if it affects the system that way, you might be dealing with a failed hard drive.
I suppose it's internal, so you should maybe try to plug it externally via a SATA-to-USB cable with an AC adapter or a docking station. This will allow your system to boot up properly and you might get a chance to troubleshoot the problematic hard drive.
I'd strongly recommend you to consider a professional data recovery company for assistance. They are you best bet on retrieving those files from the HDD. Third-party recovery tools could help but first you should test the HDD's health and SMART status using its manufacturer's brand-specific diagnostic tool (or a third-party alternative).

Good luck! Keep us posted, though.
SuperSoph_WD
 
Solution