Failing hard drives that had worked perfectly; USB adapter only partially recognizes

I have an Asus K52N-BGR5 laptop running Windows 7 that sat shut down for two weeks, and the first time I powered it up again, the hard drive won't boot. The drive certainly powers up, and I even get some Windows pre-loading (the four colorful windows merge together and I get a progress bar on the bottom stating that Windows is loading files), but then I get an error dialog box with the title "AI Recovery" that goes on to state "No hard drive has been detected for recovery. The recovery process will not continue. The system will now power off." The laptop worked just fine before; I have no clue what happened.

I took the laptop apart and made sure the drive was firmly affixed; no luck. I also tried booting from my backup disks but no luck there either (I also tried a friend's Windows 7 disk although I'm not certain if it was a good copy). I decided to buy an adapter so I could plug n' play the drive through a USB cable to another computer. Here's where it gets interesting: the drive powers up and the new computer will recognize the new hardware and say it's ready to use. It shows up in the device manager under both disk drives and as a USB mass storage device. Yet, I still cannot access the drive whatsoever (and it shows drivers up to date and troubleshooting says all is working fine). The closest I have seem to come was the chance to format the drive, which I attempted, only to get an error message that the drive was unable to format at the end of the process.

What's a bit more curious is that I have an older laptop hard drive (Gateway T-6859u that runs on Vista) that also worked. When I insert that into the Asus, I get the same response. Ditto for when I use the adapter to attach it to a working computer.

Finally, I have an old desktop hard drive that also worked prior to time in the closet. I tried the adapter there, and again, all the same results (and the master jumper is on this one).

Sorry for the long post; just trying to provide as much info as possible. As noted, I am willing to reformat, but I would love to grab the files first if possible. Any recommendations are super appreciated!

 

Re: Failing hard drives that had worked perfectly; USB adapter only partially recogni

I had the same problem. The way I solved it: Attach the hard drive to the adapter and plug it into a PC that has Windows XP. I bet you'll be able to access it then. I've tried to find a vista driver that would work, but I decided that it was just easier to keep an older machine around. I hope this helps.:-D

 

Re: Failing hard drives that had worked perfectly; USB adapter only partially recogni

Yes, having three hard drives on three operating systems (W7, Vista, and ME) certainly doesn't help! But I have tried all three drives on both a Windows XP and Windows 7 machine. I get the same results for all drives on all machines. Any other recommendations?

Thanks for responding!

 

Re: Failing hard drives that had worked perfectly; USB adapter only partially recogni

-> raveradio

On your working PC that you plugged the drive into via USB, have you tried any diagnostic software such as Seatools/WD Lifeguard/HD Tune etc on the Win 7 laptop's drive ? Presumably the drive shows up in Explorer and DiskManagement. I don't see how your disks could have suddenly started failing like that...I can't help with the error I'm afraid, might your laptop hardware be faulty ? You might try booting from a Linux CD or USB memory stick, and then looking at or copying your laptop's HD.
If you think formatting is an issue, a quick format might work where full format doesn't, though I don't see how that helps.

Just a couple of suggestions.

Dumb_Question
13.February.2014