Question: Hello,
I was using my computer and it started slowing down then became almost entirely unresponsive so I shut down.
Now the HDD is corrupted. I boot from an SSD but my HDD had almost every single file on it. If I boot with the HDD connected my system becomes incredibly slow, but ofc it I don t have the HDD connected I can t check its health/status.
I m lost as to what to do, I d really like to recover the data on this HDD…
Answer:If your bios allows, you can set it to hot-plug/hot-swap the Sata connectors. You’d plug power into the hdd, but not the data cord, boot up as normal then plug in the data. Windows will read it like a USB stick inserted.
Of course that all depends on exactly what the issue is with the hdd, if the controller board is bunk, if the drive itself is mechanically bunk, it’ll still be bunk overall, there’s no way of telling if it’s a physical failure or not, but it sounds like the drive is toast, not so much the data.