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Hard drive recovery - Help!

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Hard drive recovery - Help!

payney1

payney1

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I've got a small USB powered 80GB external hard drive and it's been a god send for about the last 12 months, until last night! For some bizarre reason the drive just completely stopped responding, and i couldn't access anything on it all.

I'm confident that i've got about 90 % of the stuff on it on other hard drives, but i know there is some stuff which i probably haven't got backed up.

I wouldn't mind but the damn thing has been treated really well, too :mad:

How do i recover the data from the hard drive ?

Do i try and format it and look for a program that can recover the data ? Or do i look for a program that can read it in it's current unreadable state ?

Windows detects the drive but it's very much hit and miss, and when it does detect it i can't access anything on it.

Windows XP disc management says the drive is healthy - hmm really!

Please help :D

(y)
 
payney1 said:
I've got a small USB powered 80GB external hard drive and it's been a god send for about the last 12 months, until last night! For some bizarre reason the drive just completely stopped responding, and i couldn't access anything on it all.

I'm confident that i've got about 90 % of the stuff on it on other hard drives, but i know there is some stuff which i probably haven't got backed up.

I wouldn't mind but the damn thing has been treated really well, too :mad:

How do i recover the data from the hard drive ?

Do i try and format it and look for a program that can recover the data ? Or do i look for a program that can read it in it's current unreadable state ?

Windows detects the drive but it's very much hit and miss, and when it does detect it i can't access anything on it.

Windows XP disc management says the drive is healthy - hmm really!

Please help :D

(y)
Click to expand...

no! :eek:

do you have a PC or a laptop?
if its a PC then just remove the drive from the caddy and hook it up as a slave drive
 
USB powered?
Are you sure it's the drive & not the USB ports?
In the past I've had issues with my ports and even the built-in card reader not recognising anything, sometimes just pulling the plug and rebooting can help. sometimes I've had to go into control panel and delete the USB ports, as soon as it confirms their deletion I pull the mains plug, give it 30 seconds then reboot & the machine finds the ports, installs the software & everything is OK - although why it should suddenly happen is beyond me.
 
As sludgeguts says try a different port (if you haven't already)

If no good I'd take it apart as it's probably a laptop or Desktop SATA hdd inside (depending on size). And as custard says slave it up inside a PC. Once done there's a few good programs I can point you too, unfortunately they are commercial so drop a PM if your interested ;).
 
custard said:
no! :eek:

do you have a PC or a laptop?
if its a PC then just remove the drive from the caddy and hook it up as a slave drive
Click to expand...

sludgeguts said:
USB powered?
Are you sure it's the drive & not the USB ports?
In the past I've had issues with my ports and even the built-in card reader not recognising anything, sometimes just pulling the plug and rebooting can help. sometimes I've had to go into control panel and delete the USB ports, as soon as it confirms their deletion I pull the mains plug, give it 30 seconds then reboot & the machine finds the ports, installs the software & everything is OK - although why it should suddenly happen is beyond me.
Click to expand...

ChrisUK said:
As sludgeguts says try a different port (if you haven't already)

If no good I'd take it apart as it's probably a laptop or Desktop SATA hdd inside (depending on size). And as custard says slave it up inside a PC. Once done there's a few good programs I can point you too, unfortunately they are commercial so drop a PM if your interested ;).
Click to expand...

Thanks for your replies guys (y)

It is a USB sata laptop drive in a case, which is powered by USB, no mains required. I can't understand either why the damn thing should just stop working.

I was watching a film from the drive in work last night, and the film just froze, so i tried to access the drive and nothing was happening. I too thought it might of just my computer in work or the usb cable, so i tried a different computer and a different cable, but no joy :mad:

When i got in from work this morning i tried on my Windows XP machine and my Windows 7 machine, both completely different spec and still no joy :mad:

The usb ports are powering up the drive, the led light comes on to show the drive is powered on, and you can hear the drive spinning every now and then.

I'll see if i can take the drive out of the caddy and try it as a slave drive.

@Chris - thanks mate if i get it working i'll drop you a PM about those data recovery programs (y)
 
Maybe a couple of reasons why it is broken, does it make a clicking sound at all?

I have had a bad HDD before and left it for a while and then used a caddy rather than the internal connection and got all my data from it.

If your caddy has something wrong with it then it might be a problem.

What error message do you get from the device when you try and open it up? as you said that the disk can be found in disk manager

depending if you can access it in command line, you maybe able to just run a disk checker as the master file table could be damaged which is affecting the viewing of the files on the disk itself.

Have you got any other hard drives to test on the caddy to try and single that out as faulty or working fine?

Sorry so many questions at once
 
Last edited:
TallTom said:
Maybe a couple of reasons why it is broken, does it make a clicking sound at all?

I have had a bad HDD before and left it for a while and then used a caddy rather than the internal connection and got all my data from it.

If your caddy has something wrong with it then it might be a problem.

What error message do you get from the device when you try and open it up? as you said that the disk can be found in disk manager

depending if you can access it in command line, you maybe able to just run a disk checker as the master file table could be damaged which is affecting the viewing of the files on the disk itself.

Have you got any other hard drives to test on the caddy to try and single that out as faulty or working fine?

Sorry so many questions at once
Click to expand...

No error messages at all, Windows just seems to lock up, unplug the device and Windows is happy again.

I tried another hard drive in the caddy and Windows 7 detected the serial to ATA bridge and installed the drivers, but the drive did not seem to appear anywhere.

Never really thought about trying to access it in cmd, i'll give it a go and see what happens.

I am impressed with how eay it is to take the hard drive out of the caddy and plug a new one in, there's one screw either side of the caddy, then pull the drive out, you then pull of the USB connector :cool:

I've got one of those connectors you can use on any hard drive, ide / sata and plug it in to a USB port, but that doesn't work on any of the drives on any of my machines :mad:


colin79666 said:
Time for Spinright ;)
Click to expand...

Hmm looks very interesting having just watched the video! Might get that if all else fails - thanks (y)
 
Have you checked in Disk Management to see if its being assigned a drive letter? Can you hear it spinning? Have you un-installed the USB ports, re-booted and let the ports install again?
 
Go to start -> run -> type diskmgmt.msc

See if your drive is listed in there (that lists ALL storage media) even if they haven't got a Drive letter.

If it's there then the data / partition is too damaged for windows to recognise and assign a Drive letter.

Then all you need is what I said earlier which is a data recovery program which can access the drive using a 'raw' method.

Have you tried plugging the hard drive direct to inside a PC? I.E using SATA on the motherboard? That would instantly rule out a problem with the Caddy & USB
 
The hard drive lives on :worship: :D!!

I tried connecting it up to my XP machine as a slave, but this did noting at all. So, i put it back in to USB caddy, connected it up, not expecting too much, loaded disk management and it showed up as the I drive :eek: it's sprung back into life, much to my surprise.

It's been sitting in the cold back kitchen for the last week, out of it's caddy, so maybe the cold has brought it back to life - strange but true :D

I've managed to get just about everything i need off it, including those silly games that keep you ammused during the silly hours of the night when you're on nights :D

Big thanks to everyone for all your help (y)
 
ChrisUK said:
Go to start -> run -> type diskmgmt.msc

See if your drive is listed in there (that lists ALL storage media) even if they haven't got a Drive letter.

If it's there then the data / partition is too damaged for windows to recognise and assign a Drive letter.

Then all you need is what I said earlier which is a data recovery program which can access the drive using a 'raw' method.

Have you tried plugging the hard drive direct to inside a PC? I.E using SATA on the motherboard? That would instantly rule out a problem with the Caddy & USB
Click to expand...

if your an ubuntu person like me, how can you remember all the windows commands lol, im forgetting them now, as im learning the power of terminal :slayer: :D
 
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