Information from a very old hard-drive!

Ron333 · 17 May 2022 at 10:30

Hi, I have been given an old hard drive from which I thought I could extract the data. Neither my pc or laptop are registering the HD from its SATA /USB link. I thought it might be that the drivers needed updating but I cannot find any recent updates on Toshiba support or any other site. Not surprising I suppose as the HD is circa 2006! Any of you guys have a brilliant solution that I might try?

mickyflinn · 17 May 2022 at 10:36

You need to confirm the hard drive is spinning is it in caddy ? can you connect it to the motherboard directly with a sata cable and power connector.

Ron333 · 17 May 2022 at 10:47

The hard drive is as it was when it was removed from the pc - I have just plugged in the SATA / USB connection in and then into the pc

Armageus · 17 May 2022 at 10:50

Ron333 said:
The hard drive is as it was when it was removed from the pc - I have just plugged in the SATA / USB connection in and then into the pc

Where does the USB part come into it?

Connect it directly to a PC motherboard with a standard SATA cable and see if it's recognised. Being as old as it is, it's likely to be a Sata 1.0 (150MB/s) or Sata 2.0 (300MB/s), and cheap USB adapters may not properly negotiate correctly with older standards.

Bluecube · 17 May 2022 at 11:00

Is it in a caddy or just the bare drive? Either way are you providing power?

demonix · 17 May 2022 at 16:00

If it's a 3.5" HDD, you need to have an external power connection to the adapter since they require more power then what is provided by a USB port.

If the adapter has no method to provide extra power, then you'll have to either obtain an adapter that does or like others have said here connect it directly to the PC and if it's still not detected then the drive is dead and you'll have to go to a data recovery company if you want to attempt to recover the data from the drive.

Ron333 · 21 May 2022 at 11:37

demonix, sorry for the delay in responding - away for a few days, Its a 3.5 - can you recommend an appropriate adaptor?

Hotwired · 21 May 2022 at 12:22

What is attached to the 3.5" drive that is allowing you to use a USB cable? You could look that up.

Ron333 · 21 May 2022 at 12:58

I used a very cheap USB to SATA adaptor convertor but clearly need something more.

Armageus · 21 May 2022 at 16:53

Ron333 said:
I used a very cheap USB to SATA adaptor convertor but clearly need something more.

A cheap usb to SATA adapter won't power up a 3.5" hard drive, they are generally for laptop drives

The_Arbiter · 21 May 2022 at 18:20

I have an old 250gb toshiba external drive which i thought was dead, turns out i just needed to try another mini USB cable and make sure it sat at a slight angle. Worked in the end, but dunno if that helps you at all

Ron333 · 22 May 2022 at 11:53

Donnie Fisher · 22 May 2022 at 22:48

You’ll need as others say a much better power supply to get had spinning up. Older hdd’s can typically draw 2 amps on spin up IIRC … which is more than the average USB port can supply.

Although, thinking about it, if you have a fast modern mobile charger, you could maybe plug the usb section of the cable into that … might give it enough juice … but its a bit of a long shot.

Armageus · 22 May 2022 at 23:20

Donnie Fisher said:
You’ll need as others say a much better power supply to get had spinning up. Older hdd’s can typically draw 2 amps on spin up IIRC … which is more than the average USB port can supply.

Although, thinking about it, if you have a fast modern mobile charger, you could maybe plug the usb section of the cable into that … might give it enough juice … but its a bit of a long shot.

It's irrelevant how many amps. Usb and the cheap converters cannot not provide the 12volts needed by 3.5" drives