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Hard Drive is Dead.....Don't know what to do next!

Started by confusedoldlady , Apr 16 2010 07:13 AM

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#16
confusedoldlady
Posted 23 April 2010 - 05:17 AM

confusedoldlady

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Hello guys, me again :)

I have my new PC (don't ask the specs, it's cheap junk! :) ). Also purchased a cheap USB HDD enclosure (I never heard of such a thing until this thread, so thanks for that).

My old Maxtor is sitting in front of me on the desk. It has a label saying 07/07/04 so it's pretty old!

So I have:

1. the cheapo enclosure (which has no instructions and really smells like burning plastic! :) ) This has a little plug inside with coloured wires coming out, a connector for the ribbon cable and lots of black rectanglular plastic pieces (shims??). It also has a mini-disc labelled Drivers, which has some badly written notes and says connect cable with screws supplied - but there are no screws, duh. It also says no drivers should be needed for XP, so I'm going to use hubby's PC for this as my new PC is Windows 7. :)

2. the old disk

3. the ribbon cable from my old PC which has 3 connectors labelled MASTER on one end, CPU BOARD on the other end and SLAVE in the middle. Do I still need this or can I just plug straight into the enclosure's ribbon thing?

Now what? Do I just connect up the disc as it is to the enclosure or do I have to change the jumper thingy on the old HD? Or is that only when you're putting in another PC? I don't know how to do that, btw.

Sorry this is a bit long and rambling :)
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#17
123Runner
Posted 23 April 2010 - 06:01 AM

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I am going to take a stab at this based on your descriptions.

This has a little plug inside with coloured wires coming out,

This is probably the power connector that needs to be plugged in to the "old" drive. It is a white connector with 4 pins. It only goes 1 way.
Ide_and_SATA_power.jpg The connector you are referancing is on the left.

a connector for the ribbon cable

This would be the data cable. It would plug to the back of the "old" drive. It is also keyed with a high spot on the cable connector and a notch on the drive. It only goes 1 way. Be careful to not bend the pins.
Ide_Drive.jpg The picture should help you a lot.

and lots of black rectanglular plastic pieces (shims??

These would most likely be jumbers to tell the drive it is CS (cable select), Master, or slave.
Lets leave the jumpers alone for now.

Plug everything in and then attach to the other computer and hope it is seen by the other computer.
Keep in mind that the enclosure is a long shot based on the fact you indicated the "old" drive was making noise. It may very well be mechanically dead.

123runner

EDIT: XP should not need the driver disc that you have.

Edited by 123Runner, 23 April 2010 - 06:02 AM.

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#18
Alzeimer
Posted 23 April 2010 - 06:07 AM

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Its a USB connection so you will not need your old IDE wire you mentionned.

Check your jumper setting on your old disk, use it as slave.

Install old drive in the USB HDD enclosure and plug it in one of the USB of your computer.

Start your PC and Windows XP should recognize it and install the proper driver.

If it doesn't i would recommend the CD with the driver you have.

After all that I hope for you XP sees your drive and you can save your personal data.
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#19
confusedoldlady
Posted 23 April 2010 - 08:51 AM

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Thanks both :)

OK, so it recognised the new disc and called it G: It was in "My Computer" right next to the current hard drive.

When I tried to open it I got the message:

"G: is not accessible. The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error"


No problem is showing in Device Manager.

The old disc is making a noise and the light on the enclosure is flickering from red to green when the disk is active, so it's not completely dead, just can't be read.

Anything else I can try?

EDIT TO ADD: Under Properties the drive is showing as full in the graphic (i.e., the whole disc is coloured blue with no pink bits), but the text says used 0 bytes and free 0 bytes. Also says "File System - RAW".

Edited by confusedoldlady, 23 April 2010 - 09:20 AM.

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#20
deggitt
Posted 23 April 2010 - 10:35 AM

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have a look and see if it helps....


http://shop.ebay.co....-All-Categories
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#21
deggitt
Posted 23 April 2010 - 10:38 AM

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sory, don't know what happened..try this...(senior moment}


http://techrepublic....content;leftCol
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#22
123Runner
Posted 23 April 2010 - 11:06 AM

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You are going to have to try a few programs to see if you can get the data from the drive.

I have not used these but have heard some good comments on them.
ADRC Recovery
Disc Investigator

The 1 from Easeus is free to try and will show you if anything is there and then you can buy. Easeus has other tools like TODO Backup and Easeus Partition Master that are very good so I would think that Easeus Data Recovery would be great also.
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#23
confusedoldlady
Posted 23 April 2010 - 12:43 PM

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Thanks guys. :) Tried the ADRC Recovery but it generated the same error message as before. Will try the Disc Investigator next, but hubby is back on his PC so will have to wait until tomorrow. If that doesn't work I'll try the Easeus demo.
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#24
confusedoldlady
Posted 24 April 2010 - 09:23 AM

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Hello :)

The ARDC and Disk Investigator didn't work. Neither one could read anything from the disk, although both could see it.

The Easeus demo was very interesting and easy to use too. It says that it found 350gb of data, although the disk is only 40gb. It has found a lot of files and I can even see a preview of some of them. The ones that I really wanted for husband's business it won't preview at all (says MS Office is not installed). Some of the files I previewed look normal and some are corrupted (with those little symbols and boxes instead of normal text).

It costs $69.99 to buy the full programme, which I'd gladly pay if the files I really want are recoverable. If the files I want are the corrupted ones I've paid $70 for nothing. I'll probably end up buying it.

Also downloaded their free backup programme so I don't have this problem in the future. :)

My thanks to everyone who helped, I wouldn't have had a clue where to start on my own. :)
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#25
deggitt
Posted 24 April 2010 - 03:58 PM

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hi, you could try this it's free and several friends have found it easy and useful..

http://www.piriform.com/recuva


perhaps 123RUNNER might know if it will do the job for you ?
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#26
123Runner
Posted 24 April 2010 - 04:43 PM

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You could try Recuva from the previous post. Anything is worth a try.

Some more to try.

Partition Recovery Try for free and buy at $49.00

Test Disk. This is free. I have never tried it though.

Link to Data recovery software
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#27
confusedoldlady
Posted 26 April 2010 - 10:06 AM

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:) HELP!!

I'm in trouble! I used the Recuva programme and it worked. Found tons of files, including the business ones I need.

I got it to recover my old "My Documents" folder and it did. Saved it to the hard drive of hubby's PC and everything slowed to a crawl. The folder containing my old documents is 13.5gb so pretty big and I thought that was why everything was so slow.

Anyway, AVG started it's daily virus scan and said it found a virus. It's saying that Win32/heur is in the recovered documents - haven't told hubby yet but he'll be livid! :) I will have to tell him soon as he'll want to use his PC.

Now what?? :)

EDIT: AVG is saying it's fixed the virus. Now what? Do I have to delete the stuff I recovered or is the virus gone now? Sorry, I don't understand all this stuff and I don't know how it works.

Edited by confusedoldlady, 26 April 2010 - 10:15 AM.

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#28
deggitt
Posted 26 April 2010 - 02:34 PM

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hi, it looks as if you might have recovered an infected file. as AVG says it has cleared the file all could be ok. you don't need to delete the recovered files. for help to make sure the system is clean post on the VIRUS,SPYWARE removal forum.

it's good that you managed to recover your important files.
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#29
confusedoldlady
Posted 26 April 2010 - 03:04 PM

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Thank you :)

Thanks also for the Recuva link, what a great programme.
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