I have a Samsung 160GB hard drive thats around 3 years old. The other day I turned on my system and Windows would not boot; it would get to the screen with the scrolling horizontal bar and the windows logo and stay there for maybe 2 seconds at most. Then it would flash a BSOD message quicker than I could read it and force the system to restart. This would repeat indefinitely - safe mode caused the same thing.
I tested to make sure that neither of my RAM sticks or slots were defective by taking them out one by one, no dice.
I tried to use the Repair mode on the XP install disk with the 160Gb, but that didn't work (typing 'dir' gave me an error message - the disk couldn't be read. Also, 'fixboot' said the boot sector was corrupted and fixed it successfully, but the system still would not boot.)
So, I took the hard drive in question out of my system, put in an old 40 GB drive and installed XP on it with no problem.
I put the apparently broken drive back in the system as a slave and i got a SMART error which said to backup all data and replace the drive immediately (this is the first SMART error i had ever seen.) With this drive plugged in, the system would not recognize the master drive and would not boot. I had to unplug it again.
What's wrong with this drive? And is there any possible way to rescue the data?
I think the technical term is that the drive has "failed". There are specialised companies that can try to recover the data, but it costs hundreds of dollars.
Indochine is right, the drive has "failed" in other words it has a physical error, which means you need professional help IF you need to recover any data.
Otherwise, installing a new HD and using the recovery disc to reinstall windows on it should suffice.
I do this at work all the time but it might be hard for you without the correct spare parts, but, IF you can get a hold of another drive, the same make and model - swap the pc boards from them. If the problem is an electrical fault on the pc board, then this might work. If it is a mechanical failure (platter, motor, head, etc.) then it won't help. Good luck.
