SATA Data Recovery PLEASE HELP

Pindy

Pindy

Pindy

Associate
Joined
31 Dec 2004
Posts
100
I am having trouble with recovering any data from my Seagate 7200.7 SATA 200Gb hard drive.

I have run the SeaToolsdiagnostic software and performed a full test and have discovered bad sectors on the drive. I am assuming that this is why Windows will not boot up on my PC, however pretty much all the data on the hard drive is stuff I want to keep.

Being the cheap student that I am I want to recover this data myself (only doing it professionally if that's the last straw).

I was informed on these forums that I could place the drive into my friends PC and access my files to back them up, however this is where I am at a dead end.

I originally placed the drive into my friends PC as he has the same motherboard as me, with a spare SATA connector, (Abit AV8 Mobo).

On power up the PC just would not boot into Windows XP (we both use Win XP Pro SP2). So I disconnected mine and started it up again - worked fine.

So now once Windows was fully loaded, I connected the data cable to the hard drive and I had a little pop up at the bottom right saying Windows detected a new drive.

Finally it appeared in My Computer as the E: drive, but I'll be damned if I can get access to it.

This is as far as I can get. I have plenty of space on his hard drive to back up as well as an external drive of his. I just need to access my files. I also noted how deadly slow everything was when my drive was connected. I definitely know it is connected as it shows up in the BIOS as SATA channel 1, whereas my friends main drive is SATA channel 0.

Somebody please tell me what I'm doing wrong and help me solve this problem.

Thank you so so much in advance.

Marco
 
Id scrap the idea of plugging it in while windows is running, sounds dodgy.

So are you saying your mate's bios sees the drive fine?

Have a look at his boot priority (in the bios), sounds like your drive is being preferred to your mates.
 
Thanks for the reply, although I'm not too sure what you mean about my drive having priority.

I have taken a look at the BIOS of my friends PC and have found the following:

Under Advanced BIOS Features:

Hard Disk Book Priority is set to 1. Bootable Add-in Cards (only option)

Bootable Add-in Device is set to Onchip SATA RAID (other option is PCI Slot Device)

First Boot Device is Floppy
Second Boot Device is Hard Disk
Third Boot Device is CD ROM

Boot Other Device is set to Enabled (other option is Disabled - have tried this as both and seems to make no difference)

Then under Integrated Peripherals:

Onchip IDE Device > SATA RAID ROM is set to Enabled (other option is Disabled)

Do these settings seem correct if I have the second SATA device attached? How do I specify which drive is being booted from?

Beginning to get a headache now! Have you seen prices of data recovery? :eek:

Thanks

Marco
 
If the drive has physical damage/problems then you would have difficulty getting the data off, regardless of whether it is the primary boot drive or connected as a secondary drive to another system... If the "damage" exists in key filesystem management areas then you'll also not be able to necessarily just copy all your files off the drive. Obviously, that is always the quickest solution, if it works.

Personally, I'd suggest making a bit for bit backup of the entire partition onto another drive (ignoring read-errors.) This is relatively easy with the right tools/know how. Then, you do a normal (logical) filesystem check/fix on the copied/imaged partition once on the new drive. Often, this is enough to then allow the recovery/access of (mostly) all the files that was on the dead/dying drive (apart from ones that got actual damage as a result of the drive problem).

It so happens I've recovered a 40Gb drive in just this way in the last week: I purchased a new 320Gb 7200.10 drive, with an external Icy Box enclosure (since I've been wanting to get one of these drives anyway.) I then connected the dying drive to my PC together with the new drive in the enclosure, and booted the machine into Linux. I used Gentoo Linux's bootable Install disk to get to a running command line, and then proceeded to mirror the entire 40GB disk partition onto a similarly sized partition on the new disk. After this, I disconnected the dying drive, and did a boot-time chkdsk on the partition copied onto the new drive. After this, I could access everything that had been on the corrupted drive via the clone partition on the new drive. There are other imaging tools you might use (TrueImage, Ghost), but there's several free Linux rescue CD's if you don't want to spend money and are willing to learn something and put up with something that will no doubt be less familiar that Windows to you.

Aside: I might post some more comments about the new 7200.10 320Gb drives if people are interested. A Lovely drive, so far, cracking deal at the price...
 
Hi ByteJuggler

Thanks very much for your information. For some reason I cannot send private messages. Any chance you use MSN messenger and I could talk to you about what you did please?

pindermarco [at] hotmail [dot] com

Thanks

Marco
 
Pindy said:
Bootable Add-in Device is set to Onchip SATA RAID (other option is PCI Slot Device)

First Boot Device is Floppy
Second Boot Device is Hard Disk
Third Boot Device is CD ROM
Click to expand...

Hmm thought there was a HDD1 HDD2 option, o well.

Tried doing a repair to your windows after booting from a XP CD?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom