Hard drive parameter exceeded its normal operating range

Question

I few days ago, I started seeing this message during boot:

NOTICE - HD SELF MONITORING SYSTEM has reported that a parameter has exceeded its
normal operating range. Dell recommends that you backup your data regularly. A
parameter out of range may or may not indicate a potential hard drive problem.
Press F1 to continue, F2 to enter SETUP

When I hit F1, it used to boot normally but then I noticed that my secondary hard drive is not visible in Windows Explorer. Now this message isn't appearing anymore when booting and BIOS cannot detect that hard drive either.

The hard drive never showed any signs of normal malfunction (sounds etc.) and never had any physical damage etc. It looks as new except some dust it accumulated over the years.

I switched SATA cables to see if they were corrupted but in vain. I put that hard drive in an enclosure but that didn't work either. The hard drive does spin when I turn on power on this enclosure. The computer boots fine without any issue but the secondary drive isn't visible at all.

Question: How can I retrieve data from the secondary drive which has these problems?

---

OS: Windows 7 Pro
Primary disk: 250GB SSD internal
Secondary disk: 2TB HDD internal

Solution

If the device is not listed in the BIOS interface error has probably occurred. The interface board attached to the HD has possibly failed and will not initialize when the Disk Controller starts polling for hardware. I am assuming from your post that there is another drive present and can be seen so the channel that drive is assigned (physically of by round robin) to is functioning.

Were the spindle motor bearing failing you would hear it whining. If the platters do not come up to operational speed the read write heads will not be released from the parked position. Even though you hear/feel it spinning it may not be fast enough to complete initialization.

If the on hard drive interface has failed or you have a mechanical malfunction short of sending it to a clean room and paying a huge amount of cash there is little you can do.

Comments

[Ramhound]

you have a failing hdd. You need to determine which drive is about to fail. It sounds like the drive that has failed is the secondary drive.

[Farhan]

@Ramhound Yes I figured that part. I updated the question with what I want to know.

[JamesRyan]

The message told you to make backups, I take it you didn't?

[Ramhound]

You can't; If the drive is not functioning then you cannot retreive the data.

[Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007]

possible duplicate of How to recover data from dead disk?

[Farhan]

@techie007 My situation does not appear to be that bad. The drive does spin but doesn't get detected by software. Thanks for your suggestion anyway. Other people here started to downvote this question and my other ones for no reason.

[Farhan]

Thanks Paul. Yes, the other drive is the primary with OS on it.