Hard Drive Recognition Problems And Other Woes

[phil123654]

This is a very very strange occurrence that I hope someone could shed some wisdom.

A few days ago I sold my computer to a friend, but I kept my hard drive so i could use it in the next build. The Hard Drive is a Western Digital 1TB Hard Drive ( 7200rpm) and has about 700gb used space.

The problem that I noticed was when I plugged in my hard drive to an older computer ( so I could still use the internet and maybe play a small game or two.) but the computer gave the error
"No Bootable Device Detected" ( something along those lines.)

Some things I want to set straight:
I have Windows 10 (Update from Windows 8.1)
I did not bash, hit, or drop the disk ( I am assuming no physical damage)
The Windows OS is not OEM

Once this problem came up no matter what I changed, I borrowed a working hard drive from a friend to see if my stuff are still on it. I booted them up, spammed F12, and both drives appeared.
I selected the working one and it booed with no problem. I looked in the File Explorer and My drive wasn't there. I opened Device Manager and looked everywhere and the thing just wasn't there.

Does anyone have any ideas?

 

[D_Know_WD]

Hi there phil123654,

So, you took an OS drive from the machine that you've sold, and you are trying to boot from it when the drive is attached to another computer?
If this is the case, then I would say that you will need to reinstall OS, as both computers have different hardware. The fact that you get those error messages is a completely normal occurrence.

My suggestion would be to attach the drive as a secondary one to another machine, back up the data stored on it, reformat it, install OS(while the drive is attached to your computer), get your data back.

Let me know how this goes,
D_Know_WD

 

[phil123654]

Thank you so much for the quick answer +D_Know_WD, but I may need some help accomplishing your idea.

-(sidebar) I did buy the new computer parts to replace my older computer. One of these parts is a 240gb ssd which I will probably reinstall WindowsOS on that, so I shouldn't have a problem with the OS anymore.

My next problem is recovery of the 1TB Hard Drive. As I mentioned in my above post, The BIOS reconizes the drive, but once I boot onto a second (working) drive, the 1TB Drive is invisible.

I'm going to try a bunch of different ways to either find the drive and other things, but I don't really know what I'm doing. If someone can help me, I would be very appreciative. Thanks again!!

 

[phil123654]

Hi there phil123654,

So, you took an OS drive from the machine that you've sold, and you are trying to boot from it when the drive is attached to another computer?
If this is the case, then I would say that you will need to reinstall OS, as both computers have different hardware. The fact that you get those error messages is a completely normal occurrence.

My suggestion would be to attach the drive as a secondary one to another machine, back up the data stored on it, reformat it, install OS(while the drive is attached to your computer), get your data back.

Let me know how this goes,
D_Know_WD

Thank you so much for the quick answer +D_Know_WD, but I may need some help accomplishing your idea.

-(sidebar) I did buy the new computer parts to replace my older computer. One of these parts is a 240gb ssd which I will probably reinstall WindowsOS on that, so I shouldn't have a problem with the OS anymore.

My next problem is recovery of the 1TB Hard Drive. As I mentioned in my above post, The BIOS reconizes the drive, but once I boot onto a second (working) drive, the 1TB Drive is invisible.

I'm going to try a bunch of different ways to either find the drive and other things, but I don't really know what I'm doing. If someone can help me, I would be very appreciative. Thanks again!!

-phil123654

 

[D_Know_WD]

It's good that you have an SSD. This would considerably improve boot and loading times. Keep in mind that during the installation process, your SSD should be the only drive attached to the system.

So when you attach the hard drive as a secondary one to another machine, it is nowhere to be found right? If it is recognized by BIOS, then it should be recognized by Disk Management as well. See if it has a letter assigned or whether it requires some action. In case it asks for some kind of initialization or reformat, you shouldn't do that. Instead, you can try to access it with some data recovery tool: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/id-1644496/lost-data-recovery.html

D_Know_WD

 

[phil123654]

Thank you for responding, I installed the OS on the SSD, and then proceeded to hook up the !TB hard drive to the OS SSD. Surprisingly, I didn't need to do anything more than that, It worked perfectly. I have no clue how it worked, but It did. I will not question these magical forces.