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How to Recover Files from A Hard Drive That Won’t Boot Windows 10 – Precise Solution

Nilesh Kumar | Modified: September 17, 2021 | Data Recovery | 4 Minutes Reading

Ever encountered your system screen saying that “Your PC ran into a problem” like this?

How to recover a hard drive that won't boot

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 then this blog has complete stepwise guidelines to provide a solution from scratch.

Before going further it’s important to understand the causes of factors that make a hard drive unbootable.

Reasons That Makes Hard Drive Unbootable

Various reasons can be blamed that make 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 in case if you have selected any other device instead of a hard drive then whenever the PC will try to boot, it will send you an error message.

How to recover files from a hard drive that won't boot
Damaged Data Cables

If the data cable isn’t correctly plugged in, then the power supply gets interrupted while booting and interrupt the process. Also, data cable gets wear and tear over time that damages its health to work properly.

Physical Damage to Hard Drive

Read/write errors, power outages, virus attacks can damage the hard drive and can make them 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 fails to provide proper condition to boot a drive.

Corrupted Partition Table

Corrupted MBR won’t allow the drive to boot the drive. MBR is the section that holds information about the disk and 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 attack make the system vulnerable are more than enough to make the hard drive stubborn to boot. As a result, users have to search for how to recover deleted video files from hard drive.

Users are advised to only go for the software-related recovery and correction, for physical component damage and repair please consult the professional only.

Steps to Retrieve Data from Unbootable Hard Drive

If you have tried all possible methods still the problem is as it is 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/closure (to attach to the system)
  • Windows operating system
  • BIOS boot order (choose Hard drive as first preference)
  • Hard Drive Recovery utility (Demo Version)
    (Do not choose the unbootable drive to download and install hard drive recovery utility)

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Step 1. Launch the utility and click on Refresh view to detect the drive.

recover a hard drive that won't boot

If the drive is detected then get the full version of the utility to download the recovered HTML files from hard drive. The Demo version only previews the unbootable drive and recovered deleted files from external hard drive.

Step 2. If a drive is visible on the platform, click on scan mode to recover permanently deleted files from laptop. The scanning and recovery of files will be done simultaneously.  recover data from a hard drive that won't boot
Step 3. Wait till the recovery process completes, and choose the files and folder that you were looking for and click on the Save button.

recover files from a hard drive that won't boot

Let the process complete, and open the location to view the files. That’s it you have successfully learned and practiced how to recover files from a hard drive that won’t boot.

Concluding Thoughts

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 is a question asked by users who own Windows 10 and struggling to recover deleted pictures from computers. This blog count all the reasons and detailed solution to resolve this issue.