Can't access partition on hard drive connected via USB cable
Hi. We have a laptop that is running Windows 2000 that we need to recover data off of (it can no longer boot). We have connected the hard drive to another PC using a USB/IDE adapter. In Disk Management, we can the drive, but it has no drive letter associated with it. How can we access the data on it?
Thanks.
Thanks.
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There are a few things of note here.
First and foremost, I would grab the latest disk testing utility from the web site of whatever company manufactured that hard drive and run a scan on that drive. Let the utility take a good look at it.
If the laptop cannot boot from that hard drive, then it's very possible that the hard drive itself is completely gone. Is the hard drive making any kind of steady clacking noise, like once every second or two? Is the hard drive continually spinning up then down the back up? It's very possible that the circuitry is alive enough that the drive is registering (you can see it in the BIOS and in Windows Disk Management) but that the hard drive itself is dead. The operating system can only "read" the drive if it can read the "label" that it initially wrote to the drive. If it can't read that, it can't assign a drive letter. I've run into it many times before.
Does the hard drive have entire-drive encryption installed, like SafeBoot or TrueCrypt installed? That might be a cause, but I must admit that I've never tried to read a fully encrypted drive from another system.
Another possibility, although I doubt very much that this is the case, is that the hard drive at some point was converted into a "dynamic" disk, which puts it under Veritas Volume Manager control. When that happens, you have to properly deport the drive then import it on the other system. I lost about 120 GB of data on an external hard drive not realizing (until it was too late) that a dynamic drive is a VxVM drive. (Needless to say, all of my drives are simple drives now.)
But, honestly, I'm assuming that this is an old laptop and an old drive because it was still using Windows 2000; so I would be surprised if it's not a catastrophic hard drive failure, simply because I've seen this type of thing happen before -- many times. I will be very glad to be mistaken in this case, however.
First and foremost, I would grab the latest disk testing utility from the web site of whatever company manufactured that hard drive and run a scan on that drive. Let the utility take a good look at it.
If the laptop cannot boot from that hard drive, then it's very possible that the hard drive itself is completely gone. Is the hard drive making any kind of steady clacking noise, like once every second or two? Is the hard drive continually spinning up then down the back up? It's very possible that the circuitry is alive enough that the drive is registering (you can see it in the BIOS and in Windows Disk Management) but that the hard drive itself is dead. The operating system can only "read" the drive if it can read the "label" that it initially wrote to the drive. If it can't read that, it can't assign a drive letter. I've run into it many times before.
Does the hard drive have entire-drive encryption installed, like SafeBoot or TrueCrypt installed? That might be a cause, but I must admit that I've never tried to read a fully encrypted drive from another system.
Another possibility, although I doubt very much that this is the case, is that the hard drive at some point was converted into a "dynamic" disk, which puts it under Veritas Volume Manager control. When that happens, you have to properly deport the drive then import it on the other system. I lost about 120 GB of data on an external hard drive not realizing (until it was too late) that a dynamic drive is a VxVM drive. (Needless to say, all of my drives are simple drives now.)
But, honestly, I'm assuming that this is an old laptop and an old drive because it was still using Windows 2000; so I would be surprised if it's not a catastrophic hard drive failure, simply because I've seen this type of thing happen before -- many times. I will be very glad to be mistaken in this case, however.
Okay, in the time that it took for me to write my diatribe, the previous two posts were written. :/ Hopefully, GoBack is indeed the issue and you can get the data back!
I'll have to check the newer versions of those CDs SysExpert is referring to - I've generally recommended a partition table recovery tool - see the first two items listed here:
http://www.lwcomputing.com/tips/static/techtoolkit.asp#recovery
http://www.lwcomputing.com/tips/static/techtoolkit.asp#recovery
Connect the drive via USB
Right click on "My Computer" and select Manage
Go to the disk manager, right click on the drive, select "Change Drive Letter and Paths" and give the drive a drive letter (this is non-destructive)
Take ownerhip of the files - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308421
You shoukd now be able to read/copy the data.
Right click on "My Computer" and select Manage
Go to the disk manager, right click on the drive, select "Change Drive Letter and Paths" and give the drive a drive letter (this is non-destructive)
Take ownerhip of the files - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308421
You shoukd now be able to read/copy the data.
ASKER
Hi. I was able remove GoBack using the drive in the laptop. After that I was able to see the partition properly. Thanks for your suggestions.
ASKER
Thanks.