Secondary SATA Drive Will Not Allow Boot

[tc1310]

My secondary hard drive returns an "error auto-sensing secondary drive" message and will not allow my computer to boot up. The size of the secondary drive shows up in the BIOS as unknown. If I disable the secondary drive, the computer boots just fine. I took it to a friend of mine and it will not allow his computer to boot when he plugged it in to his either. I am sure this is bad. Is there any way to get my data off of the drive? I have a Dell Dimension E510 and just added this hard drive about 6 months ago. The hard drive brand is Magnetic Data Technologies.

 

[ELMO_2006]

You can try an Ubuntu bootable disk

 

[littleleo]

If your computer has USB ports you could get a USB to SATA/IDE adapter and connect it that way and drag your stuff off. I've used the Vantec CB-ISATAU2 to do that on several occasions.

 

[tc1310]

Thank you both for the quick replies. I will try the Ubuntu option first and if that doesn't work, I will order the SATA/IDE adapter. I just want to get my files off of the hard drive if possible. Have a great day!

 

[ram1009]

I believe the only way either of these ideas would work is if the boot sector were damaged and since there is no OS in this as a second drive there is no boot sector. Get ready for a very expensive quote to recover your data from a recovery service.