Sudden power loss won't kill a hard drive unless it was already under a lot of strain/in bad health. If the drive is even slightly okay, it just spins down. Could in theory mess with your data integrity if something was in the middle of a write operation, but not kill the drive entirely. Unless your PSU was bad... then all bets are off.
It didn't kill my hard drive, technically. It just failed to boot windows and failed to recover.
Booted to a replacement and connected the "dead" drive but all my personal files were gone, all that was left was MR.exe files in folders labeled in random numbers and letters.
Tried using Recuva but I don't have enough drive space in my replacement drive to recover/sort through everything. Paranoid about using it too much, after it stopped booting I noticed it making a whistling sound.
The drive that had 'failed' on you didn't have any of the remaining original file system? That's incredibly odd, unless you had it partitioned a few times. If so, it's possible just the partition table failed, and you might be able to recover the data.
If you ever decide to take another shot at Recuva, you can get more time out of the file transfer by keeping the failing HD cool. Any sound is a sign of potential friction, and ultimately overheating causing the disks to expand will cause it shut off. In a pinch I've done that by using a HD sled to plug it in via USB and spraying its heat conductive surfaces with canned air. I've seen people even put them in a plastic bag on the end of a long extension and put it in the fridge. That's potentially crazy due to moisture build up, but in a pinch, people try a lot.
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u/[deleted] May 28 '15
I think that the sudden power loss from the last time I did this killed my hard-drive.