Hi, I have a 2 hard drives in my computer an IDE ( c: ) and a SATA ( d: ). Yesterday the sata drive died. This is the second time in 6 months that a sata drive has died in this computer. When I start my computer the bios recognizes the drive but windows xp hangs just before the login screen appears. Windows loads fine if I disconnect the sata drive before starting the computer. I have 2 questions. 1. Does anyone of a way that I can possibly get the information off of this drive seeing as I can't load windows? I have tried to boot windows in safe mode but that hangs on gagp30kx.sys. 2. Any idea would might be causing my computer ( a desktop ) to fry 2 hard drives? Thanks, Bryan

The motherboard *could* have a bad SATA port or controller that is causing the drive(s) to go bad. I've seen it happen with PATA drives before. I would try connecting the drive to another SATA port - preferably one on a separate controller (many motherboards have two sets of SATA ports). Or you could try attaching it in another computer. Of course there is also the possibility that you happenened to get two bad hard drives. The odds are against it, but it can happen. The odds are agains any one person winning the lottery, but someone always does - eventually. You could just be that lucky (err, unlucky) individual that got two bad hard drives back to back. If you repace the drive I would still use a different post/controller for the new drive, just in case. Michael J

Thanks for the reply. I have tried both SATA ports on the motherboard and got the same result. I'm wondering if the motherboard or power supply is the cause of my hard drive death. I need to try the hard drive in a different computer and see what happens. Update: I was able to boot into safe mode with the SATA drive disabled, which doesn't do me much good. One guy suggested I try to hotplug the drive after windows has started but this didn't work either.

Note on your Update. connecting a Harddrive while under power is a good way to wreck more components. As far as your question goes, if the BIOS sees the drive correctly chances are the drive is mechanically OK but the data is corrupted. What OS and service packs are running on this computer?

I'm using Win XP sp2. Also, I have tried different cables and tried both SATA ports and got the same result.