Recovering Data From A Hard Drive

[Saucer Man]

I want to recover some data from a hard drive. I have a USB drive
enclosure. After I plug the drive into the enclosure, and the enclosure
into the PC, what steps are required to see the contents of this drive? I
don't want to format it.

 

[Guest]

you should be able to view the device easily using windows explorer, do you
get any errrors.

 

[Ghostrider]

I want to recover some data from a hard drive. I have a USB drive
enclosure. After I plug the drive into the enclosure, and the enclosure
into the PC, what steps are required to see the contents of this drive? I
don't want to format it.

First, don't forget to turn on the power to the USB drive enclosure and
get the HD spinning. Next, after connecting to the PC and if all went
well, Windows XP should be able to see the hard drive and assign its
partition(s) its/their drive letter(s). The contents of the drive in the
USB enclosure should be readable.

If above scenario did not happen, post back with details of failure.

 

[Saucer Man]

The last time I tried this...XP saw the partition but did not assign it a
drive letter. At that point, I followed the steps in Disk Management and I
ended up formatting it. I don't want that to happen this time. If XP
doesn't recognize it, can I assign it a letter without formatting it?

 

[Ghostrider]

The last time I tried this...XP saw the partition but did not assign it a
drive letter. At that point, I followed the steps in Disk Management and I
ended up formatting it. I don't want that to happen this time. If XP
doesn't recognize it, can I assign it a letter without formatting it?

Don't know why that would happen. We do this all the time and either the
drive letter(s) are assigned or we can do it through Disk Management just
by right-clicking on the icon for Disk 2 (or whatever) and then clicking
on the Change Drive Letter and Path line. The Edit feature is used to
change the drive letter.

Whatever happens, do not allow the HD to format.

 

[Saucer Man]

Ok. If there is NO driver letter, I can right-click and select CHANGE DRIVE
LETTER to give it one?

How about if I install the drive inside the PC? Will this be easier? I
also don't want to get into issues where I cannot copy the files off of the
drive I am adding because of permission issues.

 

[Paul Randall]

If you are doing this with a WXP computer, it should automatically recognise
and assign drive letters to partitions formatted with standard PC type
formats, like NTFS, Fat32, and Fat16. It will probably not recognise Linux
or Mac partitions or formats. It will also probably not recognise
non-standard formats like those used a few years ago to allow using large
hard drives with BIOSs that couldn't handle large hard drives.

What is the partitioning and formatting of the drive in question?

-Paul Randall

 

[GHalleck]

Ok. If there is NO driver letter, I can right-click and select CHANGE DRIVE
LETTER to give it one?

How about if I install the drive inside the PC? Will this be easier? I
also don't want to get into issues where I cannot copy the files off of the
drive I am adding because of permission issues.

First, it will probably not be any easier. The failure to assign a
drive letter indicates that Windows is not recognizing the drive, for
whatever reason. Perhaps it was not properly configured as a single
drive when put into the external enclosure.

Second, putting a HD as the second drive into a computer is also fraught
with potential problems. There are things to know, such as the type of
ribbon cable being used (viz., IDE or Cable Select) possibly leading to
jumpering both hard drives, etc. Any error could result in loss of data
from one or both drives or their corruption.

If the data is important and there are no backups for it, get professional
assistance.

 

[Saucer Man]

I'm not sure of the partitioning as I haven't seen this yet. It is at a
friends and he wants me to get some photos from the drive. The drive was in
his windows xp box but the PC would not boot one day. He stated it came up
with a BSD with a message similar to Unmountable Volume. He has since
installed a new drive in his PC but wants me to extract some pictures from
the old drive. I have this USB hard drive enclosure and thought it might be
helpful. I have been reading that people get a message "Access Denied" when
trying to copy data from Windows XP drives. The company that manufactured
the enclosure wasn't any help. They said be sure to set the jumpers on the
drive to MASTER. They also said that the drive has to be formatted after
the enclosure is connected to the PC! I told them this defeats the purpose.

 

[Ed Mc]

I want to recover some data from a hard drive. I have a USB drive
enclosure. After I plug the drive into the enclosure, and the enclosure
into the PC, what steps are required to see the contents of this drive? I
don't want to format it.

Are you using TweakUI ? If so are more drive
letters available for assignment?

 

[Saucer Man]

I haven't seen this drive or his PC yet. I wanted to get as much background
info first before I go there.

 

[Paul Randall]

That is the kind of info we needed. Being a WXP machine increases the
chances that it probably used standard PC partitioning and formatting.
Unmountabe Volume indicates that the master boot record or partition table
got messed up. There are utilities that can fix this kind of stuff. It is
possible the directory also got messed up, but there are utilities to
attempt to fix that too.

Depending on how important the pictures are, you may want to make an image
with Norton Ghost or Acronis before starting the recovery.

Hopefully someone will jump in here with some actual experience. If not,
start a new thread with a title something like 'need help recovering files
from unmountable volume', and include the info you presented in this
message.

-Paul Randall

 

[Anna]

I'm not sure of the partitioning as I haven't seen this yet. It is at a
friends and he wants me to get some photos from the drive. The drive was
in his windows xp box but the PC would not boot one day. He stated it
came up with a BSD with a message similar to Unmountable Volume. He has
since installed a new drive in his PC but wants me to extract some
pictures from the old drive. I have this USB hard drive enclosure and
thought it might be helpful. I have been reading that people get a
message "Access Denied" when trying to copy data from Windows XP drives.
The company that manufactured the enclosure wasn't any help. They said be
sure to set the jumpers on the drive to MASTER. They also said that the
drive has to be formatted after the enclosure is connected to the PC! I
told them this defeats the purpose.

Saucer Man:
As you surmise, it probably would be best if you install your friend's HDD
as an internal HDD in your system and extract whatever data you can from it.
Obviously this assumes the disk is non-defective and its data can at least
be accessed even if the drive for one reason or another is unbootable.

I'm assuming, of course, that you're working with a desktop PC and won't
have any problems connecting that HDD as a secondary HDD in your system -
either as a Slave to your own Primary Master boot drive or anywhere on the
motherboard's Secondary IDE channel. I assume you know your way about this,
right? Just make sure you jumper the drive correctly and that your
connections are secure. I'm also making the assumption this is a PATA (not a
SATA) HDD. It's a relatively simple process if you've been inside your PC
case a few times.

On the other hand, there's no reason why you couldn't simply install the
disk in your USB enclosure and try that method to access the data. It's
simple enough and presumably should work assuming you're dealing with a
non-defective HDD.
Anna

 

[Paul Randall]

I should have stated that 'unmountable volume' means that you will
definitely not see a drive letter for this drive in Windows or DOS, whether
set up as an internal hard drive or in the USB enclosure. The BIOS should
see it as an internal hard drive and WXP's disk management should see it
either as an internal hard drive and in the USB enclosure. Repair utilities
and Norton Ghost and Acronis will see it if the BIOS sees it, and may see it
if disk management sees it. If they can see it then they can probably read
and write it. I'm a fan of the DOS version of Ghost because I trust that
booting from a CD or floppy will not mess with the hard drives. I'm less
trusting of Windows to not automatically do something. Depending on the
version of Ghost and the DOS USB drivers it provides and compatibility with
your enclosure, you may be able to repair the drive with DOS utilities.

-Paul Randall

 

[Saucer Man]

Yes. I have done this before and we are talking about an IDE drive. I
thought it was okay to leave the drives jumpers on cable select?

 

[Saucer Man]

Also, if I connect the drive in the enclosure, do I need to set the jumpers
to anything specific?

 

[Anna]

Yes. I have done this before and we are talking about an IDE drive. I
thought it was okay to leave the drives jumpers on cable select?

Also, if I connect the drive in the enclosure, do I need to set the jumpers
to anything specific?

SM:
It's fine to connect/configure that secondary HDD as Cable Select. I assume
you have an understanding of Master/Slave relationships as affected by
whether the drive is connected to the end or middle connector of the IDE
data (ribbon) cable when the CS configuration is used. In any event it's
probably of little importance here where your only intention is to access
that secondary HDD in order to copy data from it.

As to installing the drive in a USB enclosure...
In most cases it simply doesn't matter how the jumpers are set - whether
jumpered as Master, Slave, or CS. The system will still recognize (detect)
the USB external HDD. However, in a very few cases it does matter. As long
as you have the disk handy you might as well jumper it as Master. If it's a
Western Digital disk and there's a problem with drive recognition by the
system, set it as a Single device (unjumpered). A number of users have
reported the need to do so with WD drives. Frankly, I can't remember a
single instance where this was necessary in my experience and I've dealt
with quite a few WD disks used in a USB device. But I continually come
across reports & postings about the need to do so I'm mentioning it just in
case...
Anna

 

[Ghostrider]

Also, if I connect the drive in the enclosure, do I need to set the jumpers
to anything specific?

What do the instructions for the hard drive enclosure say to set the
jumpers? Don't guess...get the documentation.

 

[Saucer Man]

Ok. Here is what happened.

I first tried to install the drive in the USB enclosure. XP did not even
recognize that I plugged something into the USB port. The port was working
because I tested it with a flash drive. I tried the jumper on Master and
Slave. The documentation that came with the drive didn't say anything about
the jumper.

Then I installed the drive inside the PC as a Slave. XP recognized it and
assigned it a letter. However, it said the disk is not formatted and it
asked if I wanted to format it. At that point I stopped and told the guy
that I cannot recover data from this disk. I told him to search for
professional data recovery experts if he wants to get the photos off.

This case is closed and I want to thank everyone for their input and advice!