Data Recovery ???

AnAngelsDeath

AnAngelsDeath

Gawd
Joined
Feb 6, 2006
Messages
813
my GF's parents have a Dell thats about 2 or 3yrs old, doesn't work anymore, but the 160GB WD Caviar SATA HDD does, and they want to get the pics off of it. Well i went to plug it into my rig, set the jumpers to secondary, it recognizes it and everything in the bios, but it wont load into windows unless i Unplug it. Now i've been building and doing tech support on computers for quite awhile now, and I'm a lil stumped on this, so how would I go about getting these pics off of this HDD ?
 
Then boot off of windows and plug it in after you boot.

Or better yet use a bootable linux livecd or even a windows one to boot then copy the files to your disk from that.
 
You should be able to plug it into a spare ATA/SATA connection and read directly off the drive as a slave/secondary drive.

Try setting the jumpers to cable select.

You could also run into the following scenario. You installed your OS on an a SATA drive. You are trying to recover from an old ATA drive and plug it in. You you may need to go into your BIOS and turn on the old school PATA controller (or set it to auto detect) and when you boot up your OS will need the drivers for the MB controller to see your added HD. You should be good after this.
 
Arentol's solution will work too. Its more eloquent. I make things too hard. LOL
 
drescherjm said:
Then boot off of windows and plug it in after you boot.
Click to expand...

This only works if he has AHCI enabled which, sadly, most people still don't.

OP, if you do chose to enable AHCI and try this method be aware that before you change the bios settings to enable AHCI you need to enable it in your windows drivers. Try googling "Enable AHCI", possible followed by your version of windows, to find out how to enable AHCI mode after installing windows.
 
25E5V said:
You could also run into the following scenario. You installed your OS on an a SATA drive. You are trying to recover from an old ATA drive and plug it in. You you may need to go into your BIOS and turn on the old school PATA controller (or set it to auto detect) and when you boot up your OS will need the drivers for the MB controller to see your added HD. You should be good after this.
Click to expand...

its actually the opposite of that lol, I have two drives for my own rig, and my main drive i use for my OS and other System/Non-Game applications, is an ATA and my other is a SATA mass storage/game applications drive. And the HDD i'm trying to do the recovery on is a SATA HDD as well, so my SATA Drivers and ATA drivers on all on and working.

So should i just be able to plug the SATA drive i'm trying to recover, into my computer after windows boots up and be able to view it from "My Computer"
 
AnAngelsDeath said:
its actually the opposite of that lol, I have two drives for my own rig, and my main drive i use for my OS and other System/Non-Game applications, is an ATA and my other is a SATA mass storage/game applications drive. And the HDD i'm trying to do the recovery on is a SATA HDD as well, so my SATA Drivers and ATA drivers on all on and working.

So should i just be able to plug the SATA drive i'm trying to recover, into my computer after windows boots up and be able to view it from "My Computer"
Click to expand...

Yes, it should show up.

On a related note, activating Advanced Harddrive Controller Interface (AHCI) was noted. This does a couple things but mainly, for our purposes, allows hot swapping drives on the SATA interface. ...but if you are connecting then the drive and booting you should see it.

Check the BIOS to ensure the SATA port is activated. Does the BIOS recognize the HD?

What was the file system of the old computer and yours. If your using FAT32 and the old computer was using NTFS that could be a reason your not seeing it. Check disk management in windows. If windows sees the HD but your not seeing it in My Computer then windows may want you to "prep" the HD for windows to use. In this case you wouldn't see your HD under My Computer. This will in essence "format" the drive. You don't want to do this. If this is the case you may have to find another computer and plug it in to try and access the files.

...as noted a bootable CD OS should allow you to see the files and transfer them to USB drive.
 
Make sure you change your HDD boot priority in your bios to your os hdd, maybe your pc is trying to boot from your parents hdd broken os.

Hope you get it sorted.
 
Jumpers can be used for more things than selecting master/slave; that is how parallel ATA disks work.

The SATA disks have jumpers for various functions, at least i know two:
- limit cable bandwidth to SATA/150 or SATA1 speeds
- use 64 sectors/track instead of 63 as a dirty XP on 4K sector alignment hack (used on EARS drives)
 
Guys...seriously? It sounds like it's just trying to boot off of his parents drive. You just need to plug it in like you were, then hit the boot selection key on startup (F12 on dells I think), and pick your normal boot drive. Or go into the BIOS to change your boot order to make sure the right drive is selected.

No cd required.
 
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AnAngelsDeath said:
um, the one i have does
Click to expand...

If you have a SATA drive, it may have a jumper on it, but it's not to set master/slave. The cables only have two connectors, so how could there be a slave drive?

The jumpers on a SATA drive are just there to switch it between various modes that shouldn't concern the normal desktop user.
 
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