HP 15 Laptop with Windows 10 Stuck in “Preparing Automatic Repair” Loop

[Turgeon]

One other detail I just remembered is that I didn’t see any messages on the library desktop that indicated the Sabrent drivers for the cable were installed.  My old laptop with USB 2.0 responded with a couple messages that indicated the Sabrent drivers were successfully installed after I connected the defective hard drive.  This is another reason why I suspect the library desktop was partially locked down.  Thanks for your assistance!

[BeemerBiker]

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@Turgeon wrote:

One other detail I just remembered is that I didn’t see any messages on the library desktop that indicated the Sabrent drivers for the cable were installed.  My old laptop with USB 2.0 responded with a couple messages that indicated the Sabrent drivers were successfully installed after I connected the defective hard drive.  This is another reason why I suspect the library desktop was partially locked down.  Thanks for your assistance!

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I am not familiar with Sabrient Drivers although I have a Sabrient rocket drive.   What do they do?  Your 1 amp drive is a problem.

A standard USB 3.0, can provide up to 900mA or 0.9A. However, the USB 3.0 dedicated charging and charging ports provide up to 1,500 mA or 1.5A. Make sure the USB-3 port you are using is one of the "charging" ones. Your drive take 1 amp and it might work with USB3 but certainly not with USB2.

I have used the file recovery tool "File Scavenger" https://www.quetek.com/prod02.htm

There are probably a lot of others.  It is free to download and test.

If there is physical drive damage nothing will work.
In the free mode it can recover parts of files to prove it works in addition to a full listing and a probability of how successful it might be  

If you find any free recovery software please post it here.

[Turgeon]

I am not sure what the Sabrent drivers do.  The packaging for the adapter cable indicates that Acronis true image cloning software is included.  The note on the front of the package claims that the software is valued at $30.

I thought USB 3.0 charging ports were only capable of charging.  Are they able to transfer data?

[BeemerBiker]

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@Turgeon wrote:

I am not sure what the Sabrent drivers do.  The packaging for the adapter cable indicates that Acronis true image cloning software is included.  The note on the front of the package claims that the software is valued at $30.

I thought USB 3.0 charging ports were only capable of charging.  Are they able to transfer data?

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Yes, the charging ports can also transfer data and could support a 1amp drive on a USB3 cable.

Acronis changed their True Image from a one time purchase to a subscription plan like Microsoft Office and Adobe. Their cloning software is only one small tool included in their True Image package.  It works nicely.   Western Digital and Kingston license just the cloning software so the $30 is possibly truthful much like a free lunch is truthful.

[Turgeon]

It does not appear that insufficient power is the problem with my defective drive not loading.  I connected the drive to a laptop USB 3.0 port using https://www.microcenter.com/product/463322/vantec-ide-sata-to-usb-30-hard-drive-adapter.  This adapter sources power with a 12 VDC converter.  The result was pretty much the same as I was getting before.  Two external drives appear.  One is a recovery drive which only has an FLG and configuration setting file.  Each file is only 1 KB.  It also has a WindowsRE folder that contains a WIM file.

The other external drive never appears to load.  Eventually I get the same error as before, “Location is not available.  D:\ is not accessible.  The parameter is incorrect.”  At one point it displayed a message that indicated there were errors on the drive and an option to scan the drive and repair it so that files could be read.  I finally went ahead and had it scan the drive.  It came back and said something like the drive scan completed successfully and  no errors were found.  The drive still appeared empty with no memory size given for the drive.

The computer indicated that files of the drive were still open and I could not safely eject the drive.  I had to shutdown the laptop in order to disconnect the drive.  The laptop seemed to hang while shutting down.  It finally shut down when I disconnected the external 12 VDC power adapter of the Vantec adapter.  It appears as if the hard drive is too badly damaged to retrieve any files from it.

[BeemerBiker]

You should try the file scavenger 6.1

https://www.quetek.com/download.htm

The app cannot be installed on any drive that you want to recover files from.

I keep it on a separate computer and attach the problem drive using USB3

It can recover data from a formatted drive.  Cannot recover from a "wiped" drive.

select * or whatever files you are looking for such as *.docx in the "look for"

Set your USB drive in the "Look in".  You may need to do a long search if FAT is corrupted

[Turgeon]

Thanks for all of your help!  I really appreciate it.  I was finally able to recover my data from the defective hard drive after I purchased the standard edition of Scavenger 6.1.  It took quite a while because there were many bad sectors on the drive and I had to do a long search.

I may need help in the future when/if I get around to repairing my laptop.

Thanks again!