if your drive is bricked, you can try this:
http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/128807-the-so … te-720011-hdds/
other than that, you need to stop trying to use that drive except for dumping all the data you can from it... it is dying on you and you're not really accepting that fact! Why else would you be trying to boot Windows three times?
The 7200.11 Barracudas are notorious for being shitty... it's time to toss the drive!! this is the perfect time of the year to buy a new non-Seagate drive and transfer all the data to it because of the Christmas sales... last month my 1TB Barracuda 7200.12 ST31000528AS (running the latest firmware for a long time) started going really slow on me, eventually Windows crashed.... it failed to reboot because of bad sectors... after many hours of chkdsk /r (does not do low level repairs), I was able to boot into Windows again... but 10 days later, it reared its ugly head again... this time chkdsk /r couldn't really fix everything, I had to run system restore to use backups of my registry and some system files in order to get into Windows... at that point, I knew the drive was dying on me so I ordered a 2TB WD black but it took fucking 10 more days before I got it... I got so paranoid that I stopped installing any Windows updates, I didn't download anything, I didn't install anything... looking back, that is what got me through this because once I got the new drive here, I was barely able to clone seagate!
Acronis didn't work, clonezilla didn't work, I didn't have access to ghost, and being desperate, I downloaded the free version of EASIS and it worked! It ignored all the bad sectors, skipping over it and it took 8 hours to copy the entire drive... once that was done, I rewrote the MBR and boot sector in order to get Windows to boot, but it was a lost cause... various things in Windows stopped working, such as power management... I had to reinstall Windows and all my apps... this took about a week to get me back to where I was! I managed to get 99% of my files, but I still lost some from corruption... I ran a drive test on the seagate and it remapped all the bad sectors, but it was still a downward spiral... the drive kept slowing down at various sections of the disk and when I tried to zero wipe the drive, it killed it for good (didn't make it past the 85% mark)!
That seagate was so new, it didn't even past the 2 year mark... I RMA'd the drive and they sent me its newer version, the ST31000524AS, but was a "recertified" drive... it was a dud... it failed the seagate's own drive test util miserably... it didn't even make it to 5% on the long test to get the click of death.... so I called seagate and they RMA'd this RMA drive and they sent me a brand new one, which works perfectly... I even hacked in a new version firmware from dell which makes it more reliable, faster, and quieter 😁 I don't use this as any OS drive any more... I just don't trust it... it's now used for the swap file and my data files only
it's a good thing you are asking for help... if you didn't, there's a great chance you lose all your data if you keep trying to use that drive
don't bother with those USB adapter things... these seagates are power hungry drives... with any external power supply for hdd use, they're not powerful enough (I have one of those VANTEC adapters, the seagate killed the psu)... you will experience weird issues and you might even make things worse than they are now! DO NOT move the drive... you may make it unusable... leave it where it is now, buy a NEW drive, plug it in, and clone/copy that drive... I recommend Parted Magic if you don't want to pay anything... it's easy to use and free... it will have all the tools you need to copy the drive, such as dd-rescue... if that doesn't work, then make yourself a Bart-PE disc and put EASIS on it... I'm confident it will copy the data from your drive... forget Acronis, it just won't work on bad drives
I too recommend a new firmware before trying recovery, but I don't blame you if you don't want to do that... one thing is certain, DO NOT USE THE DRIVE
DO NOT WRITE ANYTHING ON IT
keep it cool, put a fan next to it if you don't have one already... heat makes things worse in bad situations... use it ONLY for your data recovery
once you are confident you got all the data off your drive, reinstall Windows on the new drive, ensure all your data is intact, wipe the old drive and toss it... you're an idiot if you continue using it... it's dead jim!