How to access SATA Harddisk?

E

Eric

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to access the SATA Harddisk?
My PC has 2 HDD, which are C and D.
C drive contains XP SP3 system file and D drive contains document file.
Recently, C drive harddisk occurs smart fail, and not able to work any more,
when I connect D harddisk using external USB case, it cannot be detected on
my notebook under window explorer, but Mass Storage Device can be seen under
safe remove tools. Under tool device, this harddisk is classified as disk 1,
it is described as "active" and "external" with no partition at all. This
harddisk is checked by manufacturer, and said it works fine, and describe
which could be format as RAID, and can only be recognized by original XP with
some SIA number, which I get no idea. At this moment, I install XP on a new
SATA HDD, after that, could anyone give me any suggestions on whether new XP
can recognize this harddisk or not? if not, does anyone have any suggestions
what I can do? the disk contains all of my document files.
Thanks in advance for any suggestions
Eric
 
P

Paul

Eric said:
Does anyone have any suggestions on how to access the SATA Harddisk?
My PC has 2 HDD, which are C and D.
C drive contains XP SP3 system file and D drive contains document file.
Recently, C drive harddisk occurs smart fail, and not able to work any more,
when I connect D harddisk using external USB case, it cannot be detected on
my notebook under window explorer, but Mass Storage Device can be seen under
safe remove tools. Under tool device, this harddisk is classified as disk 1,
it is described as "active" and "external" with no partition at all. This
harddisk is checked by manufacturer, and said it works fine, and describe
which could be format as RAID, and can only be recognized by original XP with
some SIA number, which I get no idea. At this moment, I install XP on a new
SATA HDD, after that, could anyone give me any suggestions on whether new XP
can recognize this harddisk or not? if not, does anyone have any suggestions
what I can do? the disk contains all of my document files.
Thanks in advance for any suggestions
Eric

Here is a procedure for you. Please note - this is not an entire
procedure. This is just the first part. The following is intended
to test your situation, to see what information is available.

1) Leave the USB drive disconnected from the computer.
2) Install WinXP on your internal SATA drive. Verify after
the installation is finished, that WinXP is working properly.

3) Download this utility. It is a simple tool to read the partition
table on each drive.

PTEDIT32 for Windows
ftp://ftp.symantec.com/public/english_us_canada/tools/pq/utilities/PTEDIT32.zip

PTEDIT32 screenshot
http://www.vistax64.com/attachments...n-partiton-recovery-dell-xps-420-dell-tbl.gif

4) Plug in the USB drive. Verify in Device Manager, that the drive is
being detected. You might see a USB entry and one other entry somewhere.

5) Start PTEDIT32.exe . The menu allows you to select the SATA drive
or the USB drive. If you can select the USB drive, write down all the
numbers or information shown in PTEDIT32. The reason for writing down
the numbers, is in case you make a mistake and wipe out that information
while working on the computer.

If PTEDIT32 can read the partition table, it means the hardware was
able to read sector 0 of the USB drive. And that would be a positive
sign, as it means the disk is not completely broken.

6) Download TestDisk from the following site. You can use the Windows version,
since your repair efforts are on the data-only USB hard drive.

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Step_By_Step

Start running TestDisk.

a) Create a log file (just a nuisance)

http://www.cgsecurity.org/mw/images/Create_log.gif

b) Your menu should have two hard drives listed (not the six seen here).
Make sure you've selected the USB drive. The naming conventions used
are not the type you'd normally see in Windows, so you have to use
your intuition here.

http://www.cgsecurity.org/mw/images/Select_disk_update.gif

c) Partition type should be Intel.

http://www.cgsecurity.org/mw/images/Partition_table_type.gif

d) Select "Analyse"

http://www.cgsecurity.org/mw/images/Menus.gif

e) Some time will pass. On a large hard drive, this might even take an hour.
The entire disk will be scanned. A USB2 interface only runs 30MB/sec,
so the USB will make things a bit slow. The information here, tells
you whether TestDisk is finding a file system in a partition, on the
USB drive. The fact that the sector count advances rapidly, that the
LED on the USB drive is lit most of the time, tells you the disk is
largely readable.

http://www.cgsecurity.org/mw/images/Analyse.gif

The results you see on that screen, are what we were looking for. If
there are "partitions" discovered during the scan, it tells you that
TestDisk can see a file system, and that all is not lost. Compare the
kind of info seen in that screen, to the original PTEDIT32 table for the
USB drive.

f) Hold down the Control key and press "c". Sending control-c will stop
the TestDisk program immediately. What I'm trying to do at this point, is stop
the program. But there is no Quit option. The program will listen for
keyboard input, and control-c means "Quit". We're stopping the program
here, to take time to understand what the output in step (e) means.

*******

If you got some entries shown in step (e), it means there is a file system
present on the disk. It could be, that there is a problem with the file
system, preventing it from being mounted by Windows. The file system
would need to be repaired, to be able to mount it. Or, alternately,
a data recovery utility could be used to search the disk and pull any
files found from it. If you recovery any data from the USB drive,
*copy it to another drive* . Don't copy it somewhere else on the same
USB drive. At this point, all you want to do is "reads" from the broken
USB drive. That is the safest option.

The services of a professional at this point, may prevent any unfortunate
accidents. And that is why I'm not going to write a whole bunch more about
safe handling of your USB disk.

To do practical data recovery, you should have more than one additional
disk, to store a backup of the drive, or to store any files recovered.
It doesn't sound like you have enough storage space available right now,
to do data recovery (i.e. copying files from the broken disk, to some
other disk). You may want to pick up an additional disk, either internal
SATA or external USB, as a place to put the recovered files.

These are some "file scavengers" you can get for free. You should have
the new, additional spare hard drive formatted and ready to go, before trying
out these programs. That way, you'll have some place to put the files.

Drive Rescue. Can recover files from an NTFS formatted disk. One other
user got their files back by using this.

http://www.pricelesswarehome.org/WoundedMoon/win32/driverescue19d.html

This one is from the same site as TestDisk.

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec

There are plenty of other programs that can do this as well. Some
cost $39.95. Some programs have a trial version, which will list
the files it can see. Then, you pay the $39.95, and they send a
license code. With the license code in place, the program actually
recovers your files. There are too many of these programs, for me
to recommend one.

HTH,
Paul
 
D

DL

And what does Disk Management say about this drive?

If it was working on your origonal PC, and the C drive on that PC failed
there is no reason for it not to work on a new PC when installed internally.
It could be just that your external USB case has a problem or there is
insufficient pwr to drive the hd.
 

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