How owuld you handle a non-mountable drive?

[Pete Puma]

I'm fixing my young niece's laptop drive, containing years of pix and music she doesn't have backed-up (a
completely foreign concept to children as well as adults, btw).

Tried my copy of Partition Magic--won't mount it and gives me a 'partition-table bad" error, then vamooses.
So, I tried several "disk recovery" programs, ha-ha-ha, but they mostly need a mounted drive to start. So,
they're pretty useless. Maybe.

Is it because I am using one of those USB-to-IDE connectors that nothing's even trying to deal with it?
Would I be better off attacking it in the laptop with a CD as boot, then? Or, in my main box using a gray
ribbon-to-mobo plug? I use nothing but SATAs, so that plug is available.

Thanks for reading. Plus, she's 12 and calls my cell every other day asking for it!!!

 

[DL]

If the hd is not avilable / shown in the laptop bios, nothing you try is
going to work on the laptop.

Take the drive out and slave it to your PC
See if that helps, but if the hd is invisible to your PC, or prevents your
PC from booting because its totally died, then the only real option is a
data recover specialist (much $)

 

[HeyBub]

If the hd is not avilable / shown in the laptop bios, nothing you try
is going to work on the laptop.

Take the drive out and slave it to your PC
See if that helps, but if the hd is invisible to your PC, or prevents
your PC from booting because its totally died, then the only real
option is a data recover specialist (much $)

There's a subtle difference between 'almost dead' and 'really dead.'

If the drive will spin up, there's a good chance some exotic software can
recover stuff.

We use Easy Recovery Professional, but there are others.

 

[Pete Puma]

There's a subtle difference between 'almost dead' and 'really dead.'

If the drive will spin up, there's a good chance some exotic software
can recover stuff.

We use Easy Recovery Professional, but there are others.

Yes. I tried that devil as well.
The HD is spinning.

Have yet to try plugging it into my IDE port; as far as data recovery, HER MOTHER can feel free to whack
the old VISA. I'm not paying to recover a disk full of boy-bands!