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I have a Windows 10 PC, with 3 hard drives and 4 accounts.
Drive 1, the boot drive, will not boot.
Edit 1:
The Boot process:
The PC beeps twice, then the amber light blinks 6 times and the cycle of 6 blinks repeats. I took the PC to a repair facility and they said the cause was the hard drive 1. When I disconnect the SATA cable to drive 1, I can boot to the boot setup (pressing F2) or the setup (F12). With the SATA cable connected, there is no output to the monitor.
I will be connecting drive 1 to another computer and verifying that I can read the data from it.
FYI, it is a 1TB capacity.
Drive 2 is 1TB capacity and Drive 3 is 2TB capacity.
My plan is (assuming drive 1 non-boot sectors can be read):
1. Copy data from drive 2 to drive 3.
2. Make drive 2 bootable.
2.1. Use Dell restoration application (which reformats the drive and installs Windows 10).
3. Copy User accounts and data from drive 1 to drive 2.
Is there a simpler process to get Windows 10 and the User Accounts from Drive 1 to Drive 2?
{Such as performing a mirror image copy of drive 1 to drive 2.}
If not, how do I copy the User Accounts from drive 1 to drive 2 (and get Windows 10 to acknowledge the accounts)?
Note: I'm not asking to make a copy of Windows 10, to sell, but I need to get my computer working again because drive 1 is faulty (not booting)
FYI, I have a Dell XPS 8910.
Update:
The failing hard drive is returning a "SMART" failure. (At least it's not making grinding noises).
The "SMART" failure was causing Windows 7 to be lost in a forever "Starting Windows" screen (at least 10 minutes).
The solution for a "SMART" failure, from the internet, is to disable SMART checking. Unfortunately, there is no way to do this on the Dell T3500 that I was using. Next step: Try with my Dell XPS 8910 at home.
Thank you for your comments.
I'm trying every technique before I consider sending the drive to a data recovery center.
Thomas Matthews
Posted 2018-02-28T16:49:09.650
Reputation: 259
Please edit your question for readability. I suggest that "my boot drive is not booting" is in the first line, and remove capacity mentions since you can fit all on the smallest. If I were answering, the answers I would give would assume that you could boot normally, so it's important to say that first. – Christopher Hostage – 2018-02-28T16:55:33.310
If you have an external drive that can hold all of the User folder contents, I suggest backing up to it, and disconnecting it before your step 2. I've had bad experiences with restore apps blanking secondary / tertiary hard drives. If they're unplugged, the restore app can't get to it. – Christopher Hostage – 2018-02-28T16:59:58.903
@ChristopherHostage: See my Edit1. I explained the boot sequence. I need to place my hard drive 1 into another computer for further analysis (which I will do later today). The best outlook is that only the boot sector is faulty. – Thomas Matthews – 2018-02-28T17:14:40.073
I don't have an external hard drive with enough capacity. My PC is not bootable, so I can't backup using my PC. I will insert the drives into another PC and perform a backup that way. Yes, I want to preserve the data if possible. – Thomas Matthews – 2018-02-28T17:16:25.230
2@ThomasMatthews if the drive is causing the computer to not POST, the drive has far more trouble than boot sectors. You’re welcome to try it on another computer, but you better start planning for the highly likely scenario that the drive is completely unreadable. – Appleoddity – 2018-02-28T17:55:29.530
As @Appleoddity already said, first check if the drive is accessible. Otherwise, this question is void. – Dennis Johnson – 2018-02-28T21:02:11.127
You may be able to boot using a LiveCD to copy the files off. – Christopher Hostage – 2018-02-28T21:40:11.073