Solved Dead But Not Dead HDD??

HDD Issue.

PC it came out of - HP P6, its an older pc

HDD Manufacturer - Hitachi

HDD Size - 1 T

Backstory: I was given a pc to work on by my great aunt, and she had told me that her pc had a power issue. I asked her what it did/didn't do and she told me that when she would power it on, it would show a blue screen that says "Press esc for start up options" which HP computers do when there's boot up issues. SO that there told me it wasn't a power issue, because it powered on and I told her that (Old people and tech amiright) So i told her it was most likely a hard drive or OS issue

Fast forward a bit, I've gotten the hard drive out, and found out it is the hard drive that's the problem. While in the old HP PC, it made weird noises so i assumed the read and write arms were stuck so I took it apart, and there was nothing out of the ordinary. I closed it up and looked at the back pcb and checked that. Everything got power that was supposed to and nothing was shorted or blown. I popped it into my desktop with no other drives and it wouldn't boot into windows. i did how ever start windows recovery but would not go past the black loading screen. Through bios i ran a HDD diagnostics test and it told me the drive will hit "Imminent failure" which pretty much means back up the files and prepare to get a new HDD. So i have the new hard drive to transfer the files to but I cant access them.

Fast forward to now. I've attached the old HDD to my laptop via sata to USB adapter so i can transfer the files, but the drive wont power on, wont show up in files, but it'll show up in disk manager but it'll say no media. I've ran CHKDSK and CHKNTFS and it said that I either lacked permission to open the drive to check it, or that it Cannot query state of the drive. I've also tried to run the program "RecoverIT" and "Disk Drill" but they're useless if the drive shows no media or doesn't show up at all. Any help or ideas will be greatly appreciated. Screenshots and pictures will be attached. The drive in question is labeled G.

Edit: This post I origionnaly posted to reddit and its not seeing any attention. posted it yesterday (2/8/22) and since then i have tried using my own HDD from my desktop to replace the old one and im receiving the same thing. No media in disk manager. Im 100% sure this hard drive is fine because i just used it.

Bruce said:

g'day and welcome to the forms.

I have to start with the elephant in the room.... not only did it sound like the drive was already dead, potentially making the "click of death" noises, but you then "took it apart"!

to say these things are ULTRA SENSITIVE would be the understatement of the year!
they are manufactured in rooms that would be on par (or better!) to the operating theater in your nearest major hospital. and the people doing the work are similarly classified - pristine.

a single dust particle can render a disk platter useless.

and if you then manually moved the arms, the read/write heads that sit on the end of the slider arm that are controlled by piezoelectric micro-actuators have either touched the platter surface or are now out of alignment.

opening a drive should be the last throw of the dice.

it looks like it is also encrypted with BitLocker - which I thought could only be decrypted by using the same PC it was locked with, as that's where the key lives. that's the reason MS introduced it, to reduce theft of laptops and having their data accessed.

but it's hard to say what partition belongs to what drive, or even what drives your pics are suppose to be showing.

Click to expand...

hey thanks for the reply, as far as the taking the drive apart, i was aware it could make things worse, but at the time it seemed like a last ditch effort to see what could possibly be wrong. Now after connecting the drive to my laptop via sata to usb it shows no media, funny thing is i attached another drive that i know works perfectly fine and it does the same thing. I just need to access the files on the old drive so i can transfer them to the new one, but they both say no media. Unfortunately i cant access the old pc that the old drive came out of because it wont boot from the drive, which is what originally started this ordeal.

Bruce said:

so you have the old 'dead' drive connected and it can't be read on your PC, what about on another PC?
but I have to say, there is a better than average chance that drive is cactus.

if two drives aren't talking to your PC, I'd be looking at the connection method as the root cause.
where did this SATA to USB adapter come from?
have you plugged in external power to it?

Click to expand...

I got the adapter off amazon, heres the link for it amazon.com/BENFEI-Drive-Adapter-Cable-Compatible/dp/B07F7WDZGT/ref=sr_1_1_sspa?crid=1KOS6BRDS1BGK&keywords=sata%2Bto%2Busb&qid=1644535751&sprefix=sata%2Caps%2C77&sr=8-1-spons&smid=A22IT5YXEXLEXM&spLa=ZW5jcnlwdGVkUXVhbGlmaWVyPUFOU1EzUTZISUpLS1ImZW5jcnlwdGVkSWQ9QTA5MTk4OTcyQkFJWUpOSUxLSVlGJmVuY3J5cHRlZEFkSWQ9QTAxMTQ5NTFQQzE5NUJIMVFMNyZ3aWRnZXROYW1lPXNwX2F0ZiZhY3Rpb249Y2xpY2tSZWRpcmVjdCZkb05vdExvZ0NsaWNrPXRydWU&th=1
im about to throw my working drive back into my desktop and format it so i can just slap in a new OS so i can at least give the pc back to her and give me time to do some data recovery. Ill test the adapter on my desktop aswell just to see if its the adapter, or my usb ports. Ive done some troubleshooting and cant find whats going on

ah, well that would explain it. on the amazon listing i coulda sworn it said it would work with 3.5s. well that solves that issue. all i have to do now is buy the correct adapter, and transfer the files. for now im gonna format the new drive and put a new OS on that. thanks so much for your help, 2 heads are always better than 1!