How to Recover Files from A Hard Drive That Won’t Boot Windows 10? Solved
Ever encountered your system screen saying that “Your PC ran into a problem” like this? Well, this image is a clear indication of an “inaccessible boot device,” which means your Windows 10 operating system is unable to boot the drive. If you are looking for how to recover files from a hard drive that won’t boot Windows 10, 8, 7, or 11, then this blog has complete step-by-step guidelines to provide a solution from scratch. Before going further, it’s important to understand the causes of the factors that make a hard drive unbootable.
Reasons That Make Hard Drive Unbootable
Various reasons can be blamed for making a hard drive unbootable. Check out which one can be the culprit in your case.
- Incorrect BIOS Boot Order: BIOS follows the boot order to run the bootable device. So if you have selected any other device instead of a hard drive, then whenever the PC tries to boot, it will send you an error message.
- Damaged Data Cables: If the data cable isn’t correctly plugged in, then the power supply gets interrupted while booting and interrupts the process. Also, data cables get wear and tear over time, which damages their ability to work properly.
- Physical Damage to Hard Drive: Read/write errors, power outages, and virus attacks can damage the hard drive and make it inaccessible. Check the drive for errors and scan the viruses for proper functioning.
- Motherboard Failures: Faulty capacitors, loose cable obstructing power supply, corrupted CPU, or memory fail to provide the proper condition to boot a drive.
- Corrupted Partition Table: A corrupted MBR won’t allow the drive to boot. MBR is the section that holds information about the disk, is located in the boot sector, and defines the disk partition.
- Software Failure: Incorrectly installed software, driver corruption, failed update, power breakdown, improper system shutdown, corrupted registry, malware, and virus attacks make the system vulnerable, which is more than enough to make the hard drive stubborn to boot.
As a result, users have to search for ways to recover files from a hard drive that won’t boot Windows 10. Users are advised to only go for software-related recovery and correction; for physical component damage and recovery, consult a professional only.
Technique to Retrieve Data From Unbootable Hard Drive
If you have tried all possible methods and still the problem is as it was before, then these steps can be beneficial to retrieve data from an unbootable drive.
- What You Will Need
- Hard drive (from which you want to recover the files).
- USB hard drive case or closure (to attach to the system)
- Windows operating system.
- BIOS boot order (choose a hard drive as your first preference).
- Hard drive recovery utility (Demo Version)
(Do not choose the unbootable drive to download and install Hard drive recovery utility to recover deleted PST files from hard drive.)
If your computer won’t boot from your hard drive, you can use a professional Hard Disk Data Recovery Tool to recover data from a laptop hard drive that won’t boot and save all the data from the failed hard drive to another external storage device.
Simply download and install data recovery software with bootable media on a healthy computer and follow the instructions to fix the hard drive won’t boot error without losing data. This utility also recovers hard drive data from dead computers without technical knowledge.
How to Fix a Hard Drive that won’t Boot: A Step-by-Step Process
Step 1: Cautiously remove the hard drive from the system.
Step 2. Properly insert the hard drive into the hard drive case/closure.
Step 3. Attach the hard drive to the system. And try to open it. If it is not accessible, it is probably due to a software failure or a corrupted partition table.
Read More: How to recover permanently deleted data from hard drive?
Step 4. Launch the utility and click on Refresh View to detect the drive.
If the drive is detected, then get the full version of the utility to download the recovered files. The demo version only previews the unbootable drive and retrieves data from my dead computer.
Step 5. If a drive is visible on the platform, click on scan mode to scan the drive to recover deleted data from hard disk
Step 6. Wait till the recovery process completes, then choose the files and folders that you were looking for and click on the Save button.
Step 7. Select the destination location to save the recovered, permanently deleted word documents from the hard drive, and click OK to start the process.
Step 8. Let the process complete, and open the location to view the files. That’s it you have successfully learned and practiced.
Concluding Thoughts
An unbootable drive is the outcome of serious technical and logical issues. How to recover files from a hard drive that won’t boot Windows 10, 8, 7, or 11 is a question asked by users who own Windows 10 and are struggling to recover files from a drive that is too stubborn to boot. This blog counts all the reasons and provides a detailed solution to resolve this issue.
Commonly Asked Question by Users
Q 1: How to recover data from a laptop hard drive that won’t boot
- Carefully remove the hard drive from the non-functional computer.
- Connect the drive to another computer as an external hard drive.
- Download and install Hard Disk Recovery.
- canning hard drives.
- Select all the files and save them in a safe place.
Q 2: How to restart a computer that won’t boot?
- Restart your computer.
- Insert a Windows installation disk and boot from it.
- Click “Repair your computer.”
- Click Troubleshoot.
- Click Restart Computer.