Hooking up 2nd SATA drive that has files on it

[rmathney]

My hard drive had some corrupt/missing boot files and I was sent a new hard drive from dell. There was no room for expansion in the case, so i got a pci sata card and a 4pin to sata power adapter. The good (new) HD is installed and runs properly. Now I'm trying to get the 2nd HD to work as a secondary drive to get all my data off of it. Both are SATA drives...exactly the same. When I go into boot order (f12) i can see it in the list and I boot from my good HD...it goes to the Windows loading screen, then i hear the other drive start clicking and nothing happens. If i unplug the sata cable, loading will shift to the other good HD and it will load up, but if i ever plug the bad HD in, the clicking will start up again and it won't start up. Any ideas?...

 

[rmathney]

bump

 

[rmathney]

help?

 

[stevty2889]

Sounds like the click of death..in other words, it sounds like your original bad hard drive, really is bad..it might be possible to get the data off, but won't likely be easy, or cheap. Not sure if the freezer trick will work in this case, but might be worth a try..

 

[FlyingPenguin]

If the bad HDD has a jammed head actuator arm (the click of death) then what happens is that BIOS can't initialize the drive. If you wait long enough (several minutes) it should eventually timeout and let you boot, but the drive will probably be inaccessible.

Freezer trick MAY work. I'd say you have nothing to lose: http://techrepublic.com.com/5100-6255-5029761-2.html