My 750 GB hard drive crashed. Windows won’t boot. There’s a SMART test in the BIOS that gives a read fail error.
So I bought a 1TB hard drive and reinstalled Windows.
I want to try to pull data off the old hard drive, so I hooked them both up. Despite the fact that the new 1TB hard drive is listed before the older HD, my PC apparently tries to book off the old HD. (When both HD’s are hooked up I get a message that Windows did not shut down properly, then it locks up with the Windows splash screen, which are the same symptoms as before.)
So, I unplugged the SATA cable from the MB (in case it matters, one of my SATA cables is short, making it difficult to unplug it from actual HD) and booted up fine, with no message about Windows not loading properly the last time.
So now I’m here typing this. I could just reach in and plug that SATA cable back into the MB, but I thought I should check here first. Is it hot-swappable like that? Is there a non-insignificant risk of causing hardware damage?
SATA supports hot swapping drives so there is a good chance that it will work. No warranty expressed or implied in this statement. If it works, you still shouldn’t unplug it while the computer is running. The safest thing to do is shut down the computer and unplug it when you are finished copying files.
A cleaner way to do it is to buy a SATA drive enclosure to turn it into a USB external drive. They only cost about $20 online or more at the local store.
It wouldn’t be wise to do this with an internal SATA cable, but there’s no technical reason it won’t work. SATA and its power plug are all hot-swappable.
If you have a case with an external SATA connector, use that. If you don’t, you might want to consider getting one next time you buy a case.
If you have more than one operating system installed you need to hold down F8 while booting to swap between them, so that should allow you to select the most recently installed version.
You could boot into an alternate medium* (DVD, USB stick) using an operating system that would view both SATA hard drives as non-boot data drives. At that point, you’d be able to copy files from one hard drive to the other without worrying about the OS on either drive.
*Assuming you’re willing to alter boot priorities in BIOS so that the alternate drive is first in the boot sequence
I have an ASUS motherboard, and there was a setting in the BIOS menu that I had to select and toggle each SATA to enable hot swapping. If you have problems, you may want to check the BIOS settings to see if your MB has similar settings. The default setting on mine was to have hot swapping disabled.
First, if the issue is boot priority, there should be a menu option in your bios for that. If you don’t see it, you might need to go into “advanced” mode. For most bios’s if they have 2 modes “simple” and “advanced”, the former will be the default.
From the advanced menu, you should see a tab that says “boot”. Under that there will likely be 2 things to check. First, there will be the priority for each type of media. Under HDD’s, make sure that the the new HDD is selected.
Then, under boot priority, make sure that the 1TB HDD is the first selected drive.
You may not have to go through a 2-step process. You may be able to select the new HDD directly, but be aware of this.
Second, as to hot swapping, I’ve had to do this recently with an SSD that was infected. I plugged in the 4 pin molex power cable and internal SATA cable while the computer was running with no problem. I had to plug the SSD into another computer that had a backup image and clone it to the SSD. The drive was just hanging off of the other machine while I did the transfer.
As mentioned above, SATA is designed for hot swapping. However as I just said, if boot priority is the issue, you should be able to resolve that in the bios.
I tend to replace my hardware, particularly motherboards, every 3 or 4 years, so if early SATA standards didn’t support hot swapping, Johnpost may have a point there on that. Although I build a few rigs each year I’m still really just an enthusiast not a pro so I don’t want to guarantee that every SATA m/b everywhere will allow hot swapping, especially when the consequences of doing so on a board that doesn’t allow it could be what one might call “bad.” I just haven’t heard of any (until this thread) that didn’t.