Data recovery

msg11

So situation is, I have a hard drive from a previous laptop. 320GB Western Digital, it has alot of data on it that I need. So I went and bought a hard drive enclosure for it.

At first it was working fine, so I decided I would transfer the files over later that evening. In doing so I just disconnected the drive without thinking.

So I tried later that evening and Windows was not 'seeing' the drive, so I drive another laptop drive in it and it was working so something is up with the hard drive.

It's powering up and I can hear it spinning and what not, not I have found another drive on the internet that is the same (I think my one is 22 Jun 2008 , this drive is 22 Jun 2006) serial numbers are the same and serial number printed on PCB is the same.

I think that the PCB is just fried and if I replace the PCB with one from a donor drive it should work fine again.

Anyone got any info for me on doing this 'donor' drive process ?

yoyo

Afaik once the firmware of the donor drive is the same you shouldn't run into any problems,

Nick

bonzodog2

Maybe. Its good to to get a board from not just the same model no, firmware version etc, but also within say 2-3 months of manufacture date compared to the recipient drive. Modern HDDs have the firmware for the chip on the PCB on the disk itself.

I think http://www.youtube.com/user/SuperFlyFlippingA?feature=watch this guy knows what he's talking about.

eoinsie74

Sorry to butt in guys and I apologise if im in the wrong forum. I kow very little about computers so bare with me please. My last Dell inspiron 1520 laptop completley died on me recently and I have files on it that i need to retrieve.

I just borrowed a friends SATA casing 2.5 and i placed the hard drive from my old Dell laptop into it. I then plugged it via usb into a new l Sony Vaio laptop. When I click on 'my computer' it doesnt show up. The power light on the casing turns on red but it doesnt seem to register with my new laptop.
Can anyone help please. If not can someone direct me to the appropriate forum.
Thanks

bonzodog2

Does it show up in DiskManagement ? Right-click MyComputer and choose Manage (in XP anyway, may differ in W7 ?) You should see the built-in HDD of the VAIO and the USB one if its working at all. If the filesystem has become corrupted, it may not show up as a drive letter.

yoyo

eoinsie74 wrote: »

Sorry to butt in guys and I apologise if im in the wrong forum. I kow very little about computers so bare with me please. My last Dell inspiron 1520 laptop completley died on me recently and I have files on it that i need to retrieve.

I just borrowed a friends SATA casing 2.5 and i placed the hard drive from my old Dell laptop into it. I then plugged it via usb into a new l Sony Vaio laptop. When I click on 'my computer' it doesnt show up. The power light on the casing turns on red but it doesnt seem to register with my new laptop.
Can anyone help please. If not can someone direct me to the appropriate forum.
Thanks

Those caddies don't always work that well, see if you know anyone with a desktop machine and mount the drive the old fasioned way!

Nick

eoinsie74

Thanks for the quick reply bonzodog. WHen i click on disk manage the device seems to show up as Disk0 in the computer management. DOes this mean anything? It basically says Healthy (EISA Configuration) with 11.10 GB above it.

yoyo

eoinsie74 wrote: »

Thanks for the quick reply bonzodog. WHen i click on disk manage the device seems to show up as Disk0 in the computer management. DOes this mean anything? It basically says Healthy (EISA Configuration) with 11.10 GB above it.

Try download a Ubuntu live CD, boot off it and see if it sees the data,

Nick

Capt'n Midnight

don't go messing around with the drive hardware until you have ruled out software corruption

and understand that it's kill (game over) or possible cure time


try linux - windows only recognises partitions that it expects, the number of times it offers to format a partition that works in another pc is unreal

try putting disk in a desktop so rule out enclosure

photorec / testdisk

testdisk - will try to recover partition tables
photorec - will scrape files off bare metal

linux util
ddrescue - will scrape 1's and 0's off bare metal , you can hunt for files later

bonzodog2

eoinsie74 wrote: »

Thanks for the quick reply bonzodog. WHen i click on disk manage the device seems to show up as Disk0 in the computer management. DOes this mean anything? It basically says Healthy (EISA Configuration) with 11.10 GB above it.

Disk0 would be the C: drive on the VAIO, does it have a Disk1 ?
As others suggested, a direct connection by SATA cable would rule out enclosure issues. I have 3 SATA enclosures here that are dodgy.