SATA Hardrive activated in BIOS but cannot boot up boot up windows

[shalkedeagle]

Well there was a storm last night and the power in my house flickered....I was afk but when I cam back I found my computer having difficulty booting up first it asked if I wanted to start windows normally or launch start up repair...I did normally and I got that BLUE screen memory cache dump and it auto rebooted my computer...so this time I did startup repair....it asked me to do system restore and I did... I booted up windows just fine... did my usual routine checked FB browsed the web turnd off my computer and went to bed(No rhyme intended) woke up this morning and as I attempt to turn on my pc it goes to a screen asking me to plug in a bootable device I check BIOS and it sees the hard drive and reads activated, I check boot order and its up there I have tried diffrent SATA cables and no luck...I have another hardrive I can format and permanently work off of however I have some extremely important files that I need to atleast recover from this hard drive so please help me

 

[WyomingKnott]

As always there are different possibilities, and you may have to run some tests to determine which is the case. For example, your drive controller chip may be fried, in which case the motherboard is a loss.

The most likely instance, IMHO, is that the hard drive is damaged. The usual fix for that is to borrow someone else's machine, download recovery software mentioned in one of the many, many threads on failed disks (Clonezilla?), and copy the questionable drive to the spare. If the old system boots up with the spare, you are golden.

If the old system does not boot up with the spare, you may still have your key files on the clone.

If the problem is some other part, then this won't help you. You might test the state of the suspect drive on the borrowed system, but let me put in a huge warning: the more you use the drive, the more likely you are to lose data. Even reading, if there is physical damage. Clone the disk first of all, and then laugh at me if the problem turned out to be something simpler. But you could have a damaged power supply, motherboard connector, frammis wire, whatever.

And be wiser for the experience, and keep backups on removable drives, other media, the cloud, or your best friend's machine.

 

[shalkedeagle]

ok thanks alot man I will try the following and see if it works

 

[shalkedeagle]

Hey I spent the bulk of yesterday trying to use recovery and cloning programs like clonezilla but I have had no luck at all can you referr me to a good guide on this forum perhaps that can show me how to operate clonezilla since I havent found any myself

 

[shalkedeagle]

bump

 

[WyomingKnott]

Never used it myself. Search the forums for "clonezilla" or "recovery." If you used them according to the instructions, and they could not see the drive, it may be dead. But I personally don't have experience with that.