Hope somebody can give me a hint. I have a HDD (no boot, just data) with S.M.A.R.T error. Can’t boot to Win10 when that HDD is connected, get stuck at BIOS.
I thought maybe a Linux Live CD/Thumbdrive can go a bit further. Any suggestion of a good distro with some HDD tools on it?
I’ve always found knoppix to be the best emergency distro. Certainly things like parted (and also gtparted if you prefer a gui) have been a part of the versions I have used. Your mileage may vary. http://knoppix.net/
If you’re getting stuck booting when just plugging it in, you might get further using an external drive dock/bay. Sometimes powering up a few times will work (leave a decent pause between).
I do know knoppix, it was the very first linux distro I installed back in 2003-ish
However for a utility:
Go on, be extravagant, lash out some money. PartedMagick was free for years but eventually the maintainer had to charge. Hmm… $11 now. I buy it with monotonous regularity (think I paid $9 a couple of years ago) well worth the money.
Download as an ISO Write a live CD/USB Choice of loading 32 / 64 bit / from disk / in memory.
When I connect the old HDD to Windows 10 the HDD clicks like mad, stop-n-go spins, that goes on for about a Minute, then it runs smooth. Then from BIOS I was able to boot again - and rescuing the data right now.