Windows 10: Is this a dying HDD? What to do now?

Hello all!


Today, I turned on my PC as always. I was in the room next to the PC, and it striked as odd the Windows startup sound wasn't playing. I came back to check, and a message appeared regarding Analyzing and Repairing my E unit, a secondary drive. This drive was old, but kept going strong for some years, until (it seems) today. The drive was working flawlessly yesterday's night.

The checkup finished and Windows launched. There was my desktop, still intact, but in order to check things out, I tried to access the file explorer. Disk E was listed, but didn't show any remaining space info or anything, and also couldn¡t be accessed. Explorer started to hang up, so I exited the window. Using PotPlayer, I tried to navigate to the Disk, resulting in the same issue.

Tried opening Disk Management to no avail, as it would hang while checking the disks info.
Since acting fast and not straining the drive is prime in this situation, I decided to turn off the PC. Explorer wasn't responding, so I had to Alt-F4 to shutdown. As expected, shutdown process also hanged. After waiting some time, and making sure the HDD activity LED was off, I forcibly turned off the PC using the power button hold.

I haven't booted the drive up again since then, to make sure no further damage is done.

So guys, here come the questions.


Could this be a Windows issue rather than a hardware issue? Maybe it didn't recognize the drive correctly and tried to repair a half-detected drive.


In case this is hardware related, what tools would you recommend for trying to recover info? This drive was 400GB of anime, music and some old photos, but it would be a pain to redownload everything once again. Any free tools would be great.


Thanks in advance for you suggestions!

:)

 

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Tried replacing the battery on it first? It may have been worn out previously, so naturally it doesn't hold a charge as long when compared to a fresh battery. A dying battery can also give charging "problems" like you mentioned.

 

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BACKUP NOW. Macrium Reflect Free Macrium Reflect Free

If you don't have an external drive. I notice Bestbuy are selling Western Digital
My Passport Ultra 2TB External USB for $88.
Use CrystalDiskInfo to see the status of your drive.

 

Great, thanks!
I haven't connected it to the PC yet (SATA and Power cables are disconnected, so the drive isn't active right now).
Should I do it via USB or from the PC's inside (connected to a SATA port).