I'm currently trying to recover the hard drive of the laptop of a family member. The drive apparently stopped working but still shows a lot of vital signs.
The broken drive still boots into Windows; even in Automatic Repair, but doesn't get all the way to either the login screen or repair stage, respectively, without getting a black screen. TestDisk identified the partitions correctly but only once, since plugging in the drive through my SATA to USB case.
I wanted to use my working Windows installation on my testbench to bring the drive back or at least get the files out, but attempting to boot on the working Windows drive doesn't work either unless the broken drive is taken out. The boot never ends and I'm left with a never-ending loading circle and a Windows logo.
As of now, this is the same as plugging the drive into the SATA to USB case. It now hangs Disk Management, DISKPART, and TestDisk simultaneously. After unplugging the drive, Disk Management does show the partitions of the broken drive, though, and so does the suspended TestDisk. So there's definitely still life in that drive.
Is there any way to boot Windows 10 up wherein either
- Windows doesn't recognize the broken drive unless I say so, or
- Windows recognizes the broken drive but does not attempt to read on it?
Is it also possible to have a portable Linux installation read the data and back it up? And if I can't use my testbench, is it possible to plug the drive in with a SATA to USB case without hanging everything?
I'm still quite hoping to get said drive back. It contains a lot of important files. Thank you all in advance.
