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My old internal WD 2TB drive (WD20EARX Jun 2011) which I mainly use for storage (not windows) failed yesterday while I was inside windows - the drive suddenly showed 100% utilisation and the utilisation never went down.

I rebooted the pc to try to fix the 100% utilisation issue and windows won't boot anymore unless I disconnect the drive although the drive still shows in bios.

I have backup of that drive but I want to somehow have a look at it once again to make sure I haven't missed anything.

With the above symptoms, are there any adviseable diagnosis steps or is it not recommended?

I am using AHCI, for such an old drive could it cause hardware problems?

The drive does not make any strange noise as well and it does sound like it spins alright. Would getting a stationary dock have better chance of having it to be recognized?

ld_pvl
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  • Is the hard drive recognized in File Explorer, even though it is corrupted? Also, is it formatted as NTFS? – Ashton Aug 09 '17 at 00:56
  • It's not recognised file explorer nor disk management. I just remembered I have AHCI enabled and I read that AHCI could cause problems, does it affect the drive performance? – ld_pvl Aug 09 '17 at 01:16
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    If AHCI was enabled recently before the problem started, that's a likely cause. However if the hard drive is old, as you mention, it may just be starting to encounter issues. Perhaps Recuva or TestDisk will help. – Ashton Aug 09 '17 at 01:21
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    This is when you are so glad that you keep full-system backups so when the new drive is installed all you need to do is restore the backup image. – SDsolar Aug 09 '17 at 01:31
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    You may want to use a Linux live CD to temporarily boot the PC and see if you can access the drive that way. – Anaksunaman Aug 09 '17 at 01:59
  • Thanks guys, I will give all suggestions the above a few tries. One more question, is getting a stationary dock a good idea? I am just wondering whether a stationary dock would have some "extra electronics" (very professional terminology I'm using here) that would help with better compatibility and therefore increase the chances of the drive getting recognized? – ld_pvl Aug 09 '17 at 09:39

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