HDD configuration, took HDD out of PC, HDD configured for PC alone

[Triacona]

Dear all,

Some help would really be greatly appreciated.

My old PC had 3 HDD in it, 10GB IDE, 40GB IDE and a 300GB SATA.
The 300GB SATA is the HDD I removed.
I have now put this 300GB SATA into a portable carry case, and attached all the wiring correctly.
I plug in the USB cable, and it does not recognise the drive.
I go into disk manager, and it is there, but it will not show on explorer.
It was not in a raid cluster.
I do not want to format it in disk manager, as it has data I need.
Is there another way to make it a recognised and browseable HDD.

Any help would be much appreciated

Kind regards

Triacona

 

[goombawaho]

In Device Manager >> Disk Management does it A) show the drive??? and B) what is the information about it in there - what does it say??? (unallocated, healthy, etc,)

 

[vacunita]

I go into disk manager, and it is there, but it will not show on explorer.
It was not in a raid cluster.

As goomba points out what does Disk Management say about it?

can you manually assign a drive letter to it? It may be trying to use a drive letter that's already being used by something else such as a network drive.

If you can plug it directly into another machine and take the data off of it, you may then be able to format it.

How is the drive formatted? NTFS? what version of Windows was it in? and what version of windows are you trying to read it on?

Additionally I've seen, and have enclosures that simply will not work with certain drives.

I have a 120Gb Seagate drive that I've tried to put into 3 different enclosures non of which work. However plugging it into a Pc, any Pc makes the drive work fine. I can copy data, write to and read off of it but in the enclosures it just wont work.

Putting any other drive in any of the enclosures works fine, including a larger 160GB drive.


----------------------------------
Phil AKA Vacunita
----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

 

[goombawaho]

Recall the following statement: "I do not want to format it in disk manager, as it has data I need.

 

[G0AOZ]

Phil did say, "and take the data off of it....

ROGER - G0AOZ.

 

[goombawaho]

You are correct sir. That is always the desired order:

Get data off > Format

I have NOT always heeded my own advice (see recent posts).

 

[SimonDavies]

It used to be possible that you could 'import' drives back into an OS if it had been removed from an older pc.

Usually if it's seen in Disk Management then all you need to do is import the drive and initialise it.

Give that a try and see how it goes.

Simon

The real world is not about exam scores, it's about ability.

 

[Triacona]

Dear All,

Thank you ever so much for the replies

I am really grateful!

My OS is windows 7
4GB RAM
Icore 7

I have checked what it has said in Disk manager, it states that it is a dynamic disk, and it is also Invalid.

If I right click on the Dynamic disk, it gives me the following options:
Convert to basic disk - (Does this require a format?)
Reactivate Disk - (Does this simply make the disk available for use?)
Offline (Huh?)
Properties
Help.

Which would I use to make the disk available for use?

Again your help would be rather appreciated

Thank you!

Kind regards

Triacona

 

[Triacona]

Dear All,

The drive is NTFS formated.

Kind regards

Triacona

 

[Triacona]

Dear all,

It was in Windows XP pro before I put into a portable HDD kit and tried using it on windows 7 home premium.

Hi Simon, there is an option to import foreign drives, but it is greyed out.

Thanks for all your help

Kind regards

Triacona

 

[SimonDavies]

Hi Triacona,

What happens if you use Diskpart to look at the disk?

Start, run, DiskPart

Then do a List Disk, that should give you the drives.
Next you would want to select the disk (select disk x)

Now when you listed the disk it should have told you whether it was online, offline etc.

You basically need to bring the disk online \ import it.

Some more information on Diskpart can be found here

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/300415

Its much more powerful than Disk Manager btw and you should be able to do anything with the disks with DiskPart (for instance you can delete disk partitions that you can't delete with Disk Manager).

Simon

The real world is not about exam scores, it's about ability.

 

[vacunita]

Reactivate Disc should do just that. It should not format the drive in any way.

So try that first.





----------------------------------
Phil AKA Vacunita
----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

 

[Triacona]

Dear all,

I have tried to reactivate - no go...
I have run disk part and it says invalid and offline.
Thanks for all the help

Any more suggestions?

Any more help would be greatly appreciated.

Kind regards

Triacona

 

[Triacona]

Dear Simon,

Here is some more information:

DISKPART> list disk

Disk ### Status Size Free Dyn Gpt
-------- ------------- ------- ------- --- ---
Disk 0 Online 298 GB 0 B
Disk 1 Online 298 GB 0 B
* Disk 2 Invalid 279 GB 0 B *
The bold is the disk in question


DISKPART> detail disk (disk in question)

ST330083 1AS USB Device
Disk ID: DE506BBB
Type : USB
Status : Invalid
Path : 0
Target : 0
LUN ID : 0
Location Path : UNAVAILABLE
Current Read-only State : No
Read-only : No
Boot Disk : No
Pagefile Disk : No
Hibernation File Disk : No
Crashdump Disk : No
Clustered Disk : No

There are no volumes.


Kind regards Triacona

 

[G0AOZ]

I'd suggest attaching this drive to a working system, then run GetDataBack and see what it makes of it. It'll take a little while for that size of disk, but it may well allow you to recovery your data.

The trial version of GetDataBack will let you see if recovery is possible, so if it doesn't work you won't have to buy it.

http://www.runtime.org/data-recovery-software.htm

ROGER - G0AOZ.

 

[goombawaho]

I can tell you that I just bought GetDataBack and it has worked on two hard drives to completely recover the data. Both had their partitions destroyed (one by a re-installation attempt of the operating system and the other by a bad hard drive cloning).

Neither drive had really been written to or minimally written, so data was still there. The tool works, it really depends on NOT writing data over the old data for your to have a chance at getting the maximum back.

And for those that are paranoid about what can be recovered - your fears are well founded. All the temp files from digital cameras, internet history and cache....... the whole ball of wax.

 

[tlcscousin]

Have you tried taking the drive out of the USB case and plugging it into the new computer and try getting the data off that way?
I have run into a USB drive enclosure that would not allow access to drives unless they were formatted while in the enclosure. Thinking it was a bum enclosure i had to call the manufacturer to get an RMA and was told at that time that the enclosure i was using need the drive formatted while in the enclosure to work.I was skeptical about that but it did make the drive accessible (needless to say i had to copy the data off it first before trying it).

 

[strongm]

Windows 7, eh? Dynamic disks are only supported in

Windows 7 Enterprise
Windows 7 Professional
Windows 7 Ultimate

So if you've got any of the W7 home editions that would explain why you cannot access the dynamic drive.

And, theoretically, converting a dynamic drive back to a basic drive involves blowing all the data away.

However, assuming you've never done anything clver with teh drive and just used it as a single partition, then the following may be of assistance:

http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=191006

 

[gbaughma]

Easy things to try:

1) If it is showing up in disk manager, does it have a drive letter associated with it?
2) Do you have network drives, thumb drives, card readers, etc. that could be interfering? I have found that one guy I know can't plug in his camera and see the files until he un-mappes his "G" drive from the network (because the camera wants to use that)
3) What about on another machine? Does it work on that?
4) Is your OS up to date? Were there any drivers that came with the external case?

I have found that quite often with the external drives, they're not seen because they are colliding with my Belkin 15-in-one (or whatever) card reader.


Just my 2¢

"What the captain doesn't realize is that we've secretly replaced his Dilithium Crystals with new Folger's Crystals."

--Greg

http://parallel.tzo.com

 

[kjv1611]

gbaughma,

I've been following this thread for a while. One of the items you mention is something I'm going to have to try with a similar but different issue. Mine is dealing with an eSata hard drive dock. Actually 2 different models, same brand:

1 disk dock
2 disk dock

The things had REALLY good reviews, so I figured they must be pretty good, but so far they've been a pain in getting to operate normally. Well, I suppose I'm defining normal by USB connections, not eSata. Actually, I've been using eSata external hard drives for some time - same systems - without even an inkling of an issue.

Anyhow, I'll be sure to post whether or not disabling the card reader on one of the machines seems to help or not - that machine has yet to recognize one of the docks over eSata, although I can connect eSata hard drives all day long. And yes, that's WITH at least one hard drive in the dock. ... and different hard drives tried.

--

"If to err is human, then I must be some kind of human!" -Me