Can an Enclosure Work to retrieve data?

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nilepez

[H]F Junkie
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Jan 21, 2005
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Let me explain. I had an HD (WD5000KS) go south today. Some stuff is backed up but a lot is not (yes I know my bad).

Anyway, although it starts to boot, midway through the boot process, it basically just clicks.

If I try to boot from a new drive with it connected, the process hangs (but that drive has no problem if the 5000KS drive isn't connected.

So here's my question(s):

Does sticking the drive in an SATA enclosure seem like it might work?

I'd try booting off my old Athlon rig, but it'd require me to tear down this one, or at least install XP a second time on this drive.

Any suggestions are appreciated. WD is sending a new drive, but if I can get the data off, that'd be useful.

Thanks all.

Nilepez
 
nilepez said:
Does sticking the drive in an SATA enclosure seem like it might work?
Click to expand...

Yes. On the other hand, if this data is really important to you, attempting to recover it now could make it more expensive to get a professional place to do the recovery - if the disk is physically damaged, it could make things more difficult for them.

Investigate your power supply. It may be the reason you have one dead drive.
 
unhappy_mage said:
Yes. On the other hand, if this data is really important to you, attempting to recover it now could make it more expensive to get a professional place to do the recovery - if the disk is physically damaged, it could make things more difficult for them.

Investigate your power supply. It may be the reason you have one dead drive.
Click to expand...

Investigate it in what way? FWIW, it's an OCZ modstream 520 psu.

System has 2 HDs (well there was 2), X800XL, e4300(stock) SB Live and a few fans all spinning as slowly as possible (or should I say as fast I can get them without adding any noise). MB is a Gigabyte 965p DS3 3.0

It would be ironic if the only time I bought a PSU (always used the POS that came with my cases before) was bad.

The data is important, but not so important that I'm going to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars to get it back.

the other thing I'm considering seeing if I can do this from the recovery console. My guess is no, since the drives were separate installs (no boot menu).

My hope is that it's just the boot partition. Seems like every time I start considering a move to Vista (have the free copy of BUsiness) my HD say FU AH
 
You don't need an enclosure. Just hook it up to a free sata port while booting to another drive.
 
ribs1 said:
You don't need an enclosure. Just hook it up to a free sata port while booting to another drive.
Click to expand...

As I said in the original post, it will not go into windows (or even recovery console) if the old drive is connected. My guess is that in both cases, it's not able to read the boot partition and hangs, but I"m just guessing.
 
Does sticking the drive in an SATA enclosure seem like it might work?
Click to expand...
That'd be my first shot. It will hafta be a SATA to USB connection, or use your eSATA port. With either, your machine will recognize it after booting.

Good Luck!
 
Old Hippie said:
That'd be my first shot. It will hafta be a SATA to USB connection, or use your eSATA port. With either, your machine will recognize it after booting.

Good Luck!
Click to expand...

Thanks. Work or not, I'll have 2 drives (once WD sends the replacement)....I'm getting some sort of regular back up routine...something I haven't done since norton bought PCTools (which was a long LONG time ago).

What i'm unsure of is God saying back up you smuck or is he saying, "I don't care if you have a free and legal copy of vista....don't use it!"
 
What i'm unsure of is God saying back up you smuck or is he saying, "I don't care if you have a free and legal copy of vista....don't use it!"
Click to expand...
I've found that guy to be computer illiterate. I'm 55, and "What goes around, comes around" seems to be a truism.

I believe "CYA" is what's warranted here. :D
 
nilepez said:
Let me explain. I had an HD (WD5000KS) go south today.

Any suggestions are appreciated.
Click to expand...
An old trick is to put the drive in a freezer for a couple of hours. It tightens up all the loose bearings, kind of like starting a car on a very cold morming. Take it out of the freezer and quickly plug it in. It should work for 10-30 minutes...depending on how bad it was. I've used this trick successfully a couple of times. You may have to do it a couple of times to get all the data.
 
nilepez said:
Investigate it in what way? FWIW, it's an OCZ modstream 520 psu.
Click to expand...
Put another one in and see if the drive behaves better (after, of course, you've got the data off it). Check the voltages with a multimeter.
 
billb said:
An old trick is to put the drive in a freezer for a couple of hours. It tightens up all the loose bearings, kind of like starting a car on a very cold morming. Take it out of the freezer and quickly plug it in. It should work for 10-30 minutes...depending on how bad it was. I've used this trick successfully a couple of times. You may have to do it a couple of times to get all the data.
Click to expand...

If I don't get anywhere, I may just try that....any reason not to leave it in overnight? Or is that too much of a good thing?

unhappy_mage said:
Put another one in and see if the drive behaves better (after, of course, you've got the data off it). Check the voltages with a multimeter.
Click to expand...

So far, I can't even get it to work in the enclosure....basically starts to lock up the system before the USB/PNP is done...but I'll try one more time before I try a freezer (which seems a bit scary, but it's not like things can get worse, so it seems unlikely that changing PSUs will make it work.
 
wrap drive in 2 8x11's to delay moisture, put rubber bands around them
put in freezer 1 hour
remove, hookup and boot quickly, (in this case as a slave drive)
15 minutes before subdir's disappear en masse.
put in freezer an hour... etc...
freezer == easy
which files and how to copy to-where... == difficult
 
That freezer trick is usually for mechanical problems, and this doesn't sound mechanical. OP, just for shits and giggles, why don't you try booting from Hiren's Boot CD? DL the file and burn as an ISO. You should be able to boot from it and "see" your drive.
Good Luck!
 
Old Hippie said:
That freezer trick is usually for mechanical problems, and this doesn't sound mechanical. OP, just for shits and giggles, why don't you try booting from Hiren's Boot CD? DL the file and burn as an ISO. You should be able to boot from it and "see" your drive.
Good Luck!
Click to expand...

Thanks for the tip. I'll give it a shot before going the freezer route. Probably have to read up on the utilities first, but it's worth a shot.

Once I'm done with this ordeal (regardless of how it turns out), I'm coming back here to get advice on either building an NAS (or just buying one if the advantages of saved power outweigh increased flexibility), as well as a backup routine.

I'm almost tempted to go with one of those online systems for the small stuff....much more difficult for all of those u2 concerts that start at 600mb and go up to 20+gb.....

Oh well...I'm late for work. Thanks again. I'll report back tonight or tomorrow.

BTW, will that disk be ok with the huge paritions (probably all NTFS)?

If the answer is in the download, then I'm sure I'll see it once I get to it tonight.

Have great day all.

Nilepez
 
Since it's a SATA drive, why don't you plug it in AFTER the working drive has booted the OS?

SATA is hot swap, wont make a diff to use a USB or a SATA connector.
 
Ockie said:
Since it's a SATA drive, why don't you plug it in AFTER the working drive has booted the OS?

SATA is hot swap, wont make a diff to use a USB or a SATA connector.
Click to expand...

Are you saying use the internal connectors? If so, I assume that means I need to power it on with the system. I'd be reluctant to plug the power in for anything while the system is on (more out fear of hurting the rest of the system than my gimpy drive.

Why do you think that would be more likely to succeed than using USB (post boot), which doesn't work?

Thanks in advance,

Nilepez
 
SATA is hot swap, wont make a diff to use a USB or a SATA connector.
Click to expand...
AFAIK, he's already tried the USB swap.....;
So far, I can't even get it to work in the enclosure....basically starts to lock up the system before the USB/PNP is done...
Click to expand...

I'm assuming he attemped to do this after the machine was running, as per my suggestion. My suggestion was to connect the USB or eSATA drive after the system was booted to allow for system stabilization.
The regular SATA connections on his board are probably not optimized for hotswap feature, and I wouldn't recommend any experimentation at this time. You can talk all day long about features that are approved and supposed to be incorporated with the full SATA specs, but unless hotswap is specifically mentioned (like on his board), I wouldn't count on it.
 
Old Hippie said:
That freezer trick is usually for mechanical problems, and this doesn't sound mechanical. OP, just for shits and giggles, why don't you try booting from Hiren's Boot CD? DL the file and burn as an ISO. You should be able to boot from it and "see" your drive.
Good Luck!
Click to expand...


Heh...i vaguely remember some of the older ones.

Looks like everything (and In mean everything) is there. A few times I saw something saying the boot sector is invalid (I think). If it was saying its marked as fat 16, then that's certainly a problem. I'm pretty sure I try to make my boot partitions fat32.

Then again, I may have seen something about sector 0 (though I scanned the first half gig with something and nothing turned up.

I'll probably image the partition with lots of concerts as well as the drive with some XP images I was working on (though based on this install, I think I need to start over).

Question: I've never had a virus before, but is there a virus that does this type of thing? I've seen some XP installs that were pretty much unrecoverable, but I've never seen/heard of one making a drive unbootable.

Anyway, things are looking up....even if my weekend is all used up.
 
Got new drive in today, and as far as I can tell, it is new. It has an MFG date of 5/17. When I got a Maxtor replacement, it was obvious it was a refurb, so I assume it's new.

On my old drive, I noticed some things that I found strange:

1. it has an invalid A drive, which in some places is called "FAT 12."
I was thinking virus, but maybe not, because

2. one of the tests say sector 0 (in drive A) is corrupt and
3. I found unreadable sectors when i accidently tried to copy a directory that contained the registry and 2 different programs found a bad sector on a very large file (20+GB...sure hope it some how still works with bit torrent....don't want to d/l that again).

Anyway, thanks for all the suggestions....still need to create a good XP install disk (without screwing up WMI)
 
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