Problem reading data from old internal drive when connected externally to new laptop

masculinist

My laptop died. An Acer Aspire running Windows XP. Specifically it failed to reboot a minute or so after being shut down. The only option given was a factory reset. Even safe mode didnt work to get it running.
However I have a couple of hundred Gigs of important and family data on this drive so a factory reset was out of the question. I bought a New Lenovo ideapad running Windows 10. Using a USB 2.0 to SATA IDE cable I plugged the drive externally to one of the Lenovos USB ports [specifically USB 3 and tried the same on another USB port which I think isnt USB 3] . Also the now external drive was connected to a source of AC power with another cable.
The drive could be heard whirring and was recognised as ''Drive E'' by the Lenovo. However it registers zero Gigabytes while stating to use this drive it must first be formatted. I dont want to format and lose all my data. Can you give me any help at all with this matter ? How can I access my data ? Or is all the data permanently lost due to a damaged hard drive ?

Is there perhaps a problem with Windows 10 reading whatever drive format this hard drive would have currently ?

Fysh

masculinist wrote: »

My laptop died. An Acer Aspire running Windows XP. Specifically it failed to reboot a minute or so after being shut down. The only option given was a factory reset. Even safe mode didnt work to get it running.
However I have a couple of hundred Gigs of important and family data on this drive so a factory reset was out of the question. I bought a New Lenovo ideapad running Windows 10. Using a USB 2.0 to SATA IDE cable I plugged the drive externally to one of the Lenovos USB ports [specifically USB 3 and tried the same on another USB port which I think isnt USB 3] . Also the now external drive was connected to a source of AC power with another cable.
The drive could be heard whirring and was recognised as ''Drive E'' by the Lenovo. However it registers zero Gigabytes while stating to use this drive it must first be formatted. I dont want to format and lose all my data. Can you give me any help at all with this matter ? How can I access my data ? Or is all the data permanently lost due to a damaged hard drive ?

Is there perhaps a problem with Windows 10 reading whatever drive format this hard drive would have currently ?

If it's an Aspire that shipped with XP, the disk is likely quite old. This means the chances of failed components are not inconsiderable - if the laptop had taken a hit, it might be an issue with a drive head hitting one of the drive platters; otherwise, it could be an issue with the disk controller in the drive (or on the motherboard of the Aspire). There might be an issue with your IDE-USB bridge, either in power or data connectivity.

In terms of how to proceed - minimise the amount of usage on the drive from here onwards. If possible, add the drive as a secondary disk in a system with built-in IDE controllers, then boot that system and see if you can access the drive. Alternatively, create a bootable USB stick with something like Linux Mint, put the drive back in the Aspire, boot from the bootable USB stick, and see if you can access the drive.

In both cases, if you are able to see the drive - immediately start copying your files to external storage and do nothing else until this is complete. Hard drive failures aren't always total, but typically once the symptoms you describe appear, there is not a lot of time available for backing up data before the drive goes completely.

Labarbapostiza

masculinist wrote: »

Is there perhaps a problem with Windows 10 reading whatever drive format this hard drive would have currently ?

Possibly.

Recovering stuff in your kind of situation can be quite complicated. I've done it myself but using things like Linux and voodoo tricks.

There's a guy in Phibsborogh who runs a business recovering stuff from screwed disks. Otherwise, it can be a real pain in the hole thing to do, even for pros; repairing the disk to the point your can recover stuff without destroying what's there takes know-how. You could try Ubuntu Linux booting from a USB stick, that might see the disk straight away and let your recover.

Fysh

Labarbapostiza wrote: »

Possibly.

Recovering stuff in your kind of situation can be quite complicated. I've done it myself but using things like Linux and voodoo tricks.

There's a guy in Phibsborogh who runs a business recovering stuff from screwed disks. Otherwise, it can be a real pain in the hole thing to do, even for pros; repairing the disk to the point your can recover stuff without destroying what's there takes know-how. You could try Ubuntu Linux booting from a USB stick, that might see the disk straight away and let your recover.

"Repairing" the disk is only really practical if you're talking about having screwed up the filesystem in some way. If physical damage has occured, it's not so much repair as data retrieval before the inevitable failure of the drive.

I'm not aware of any reason Windows 10 wouldn't handle a generic USB-disk controller bridge connected to a disk with a Windows-supported filesystem on it, but I'm open to learning new things if this is a known issue (I'd prefer tech sources over unverified forum threads or hearsay, though).

OP: If you want to attempt recovery of the partition(s) on the disk you can try Testdisk. However, based on what you've said so far I wouldn't expect it to work until the Disk Management view in windows at least shows the correct size for the disk.

extra-ordinary_

masculinist wrote: »

My laptop died. An Acer Aspire running Windows XP. Specifically it failed to reboot a minute or so after being shut down. The only option given was a factory reset. Even safe mode didnt work to get it running.
However I have a couple of hundred Gigs of important and family data on this drive so a factory reset was out of the question. I bought a New Lenovo ideapad running Windows 10. Using a USB 2.0 to SATA IDE cable I plugged the drive externally to one of the Lenovos USB ports [specifically USB 3 and tried the same on another USB port which I think isnt USB 3] . Also the now external drive was connected to a source of AC power with another cable.
The drive could be heard whirring and was recognised as ''Drive E'' by the Lenovo. However it registers zero Gigabytes while stating to use this drive it must first be formatted. I dont want to format and lose all my data. Can you give me any help at all with this matter ? How can I access my data ? Or is all the data permanently lost due to a damaged hard drive ?

Is there perhaps a problem with Windows 10 reading whatever drive format this hard drive would have currently ?

Have you checked the status of this connected disk in Disk Management?

masculinist

Thanks for the replies. I havent done attempted any of the other suggestions above yet but I will consider them. As the drive although unreadable is labelled with the letter E , what I have done so far is try chkdsk E: in an administrator command window.

The response is that the data is RAW and inaccessible and its unable to detect the file type. So that was a dead end.

The drive itself doesn't seem to be damaged. At least how this problem occurred is as follows :

I was in a library copying down some information. I shut down the laptop. About 2 mins later I realised I needed to start it up again because I had overlooked something. It wouldn't boot up at that point and only offered factory reset (believe me I tried every possible combination available at the time. Even command window and safe mode wouldnt work).

If the hard drive is damaged due to a bump or hit it has to be due to an accumulation of small bumps over a long time, not one large careless bump. The data must be there somewhere. Even deliberately deleting 200 Gigs or so of data would actually take a lot of time.


Ive been looking for some sort of software which could recover this data. Is there any trustworthy one which is free ?

mordeith

Where are you copying the data from? Any chance of a virus?

masculinist

mordeith wrote: »

Where are you copying the data from? Any chance of a virus?

No chance of a virus at all. I just like to sh1tpost on forums and facebook to be honest. I dont' surf anywhere dangerous or risky and I always have updated anti virus software. Furthermore I havent downloaded any new executable files or programs in months. The last one was OpenOffice and that was 6 months ago.

I would like to copy the data [ and would love to find the data first] from this problematic hard drive to the hard drive of my newly purchased Windows 10 Lenovo Ideapad. Using an external IDE cable and power supply it is presently connected as an external drive to my new laptop.

ED E

CHKDSK may not have been the best idea. It can throw away fragments it cant recover...lucky theres nothing mounted.


RAW says its got no partition table. So the drive controller is talking to the host but not much more. Does it audibly spin up?

If its not spinning it up it could be:
A, not enough power from your adapter
B, failed motor

If it does spin up the MFT may just be unreadable. There are some tools that can attempt to repair this but it can be destructive. At this point best to evaluate whether its worth sending the disk away for professional repair rather than risking your family data.

Labarbapostiza

Fysh wrote: »

I'm not aware of any reason Windows 10 wouldn't handle a generic USB-disk controller bridge connected to a disk with a Windows-supported filesystem on it, but I'm open to learning new things if this is a known issue (I'd prefer tech sources over unverified forum threads or hearsay, though).

I think, finding-out-the-hardway, might be the only way. I've left disks fail, where I've had to jump through a lot of hoops to recover stuff. I believe for windows systems, there's data structures in an absolute location in the early sectors on a disk, and if they're corrupted Windows can't see the disk at all. Linux takes a different approach in guessing it's a Windows format. So my experience is the disk becomes completely inaccessible to Windows, but booting Linux allows access.

Fysh

Labarbapostiza wrote: »

I think, finding-out-the-hardway, might be the only way. I've left disks fail, where I've had to jump through a lot of hoops to recover stuff. I believe for windows systems, there's data structures in an absolute location in the early sectors on a disk, and if they're corrupted Windows can't see the disk at all. Linux takes a different approach in guessing it's a Windows format. So my experience is the disk becomes completely inaccessible to Windows, but booting Linux allows access.

I know that since Vista there are explicit end-of-partition markers placed in NTFS filesystems, but I'm not sure about equivalent start-of-filesystem markers. I've not encountered issues with NTFS partitions being unrecognised by Windows but recognised by Linux, though.

For what it's worth, I have used 2 USB disk bridge devices with Windows 10 today and both worked fine (IDE mode with an optical drive and SATA mode with several disks). I guess it could vary by manufacturer, though.

masculinist

Has anyone here heard about or used this software ?


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

FanadMan

masculinist wrote: »

Has anyone here heard about or used this software ?


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

Only place I've heard of that was a few threads earlier......from Ed E

Have never used it but will have to try it on a few old drives.

masculinist

So if I recover a file and its garbage should I assume it's encrypted because of the password which was on the old Win XP system ?

Or does it just mean its literally garbage and I am screwed ? I dont see any mention of asking for system passwords from these softwares. Or is Win XP password protection very easy to override these days ?

Fysh

masculinist wrote: »

Has anyone here heard about or used this software ?


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

Yep, I mentioned it a few posts up

It is useful for recovering partition structures on disks, but is most effective when the problem has been caused by an accidental partition deletion or reformatting, rather than a failing disk.

As for the password aspect - if you encrypted your filesystem, you most likely won't be recovering anything. However, this would only be the case if you chose to enable EFS on your laptop (it's not available in XP Home, and I can't recall having ever dealt with it in the wild).

If you're just referring to having a password on your account, recovering the filesystem isn't affected by that. What you will most likely find is that if the partition isn't restorable, whatever files can be recovered won't have their original filename, so you'll be doing a lot of manual checking of files to see what's worth keeping...

masculinist

Fysh wrote: »

Yep, I mentioned it a few posts up
.

oops sorry

Some of us are truly undiagnosed ADD sufferers.

I managed to obtain a copy of EaseUS

And am taking it slowly from there. It identified a partition from which I recovered some files [in a fraction of the time which a utility masquerading as 'free'' could even do a initial scan] but the word/rft/openoffice document I was looking for was incomplete . Ill do another scan later.