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Need to retreive data from Windows 2000 laptop IDE hard drive

I've been given a Windows 2000 IDE laptop hard drive and I need to retrieve the data. I've hooked it up to my Windows 7 machine and disk management does see it, however, the drive is not initialized. When I go to initialize the drive, I get the following error:

"The device is not ready".

Does anyone have any ideas how I proceed from here?

Thanks for your help

Britt Thompson

I'm assuming this drive is in an external enclosure or something of that nature? Is the drive making any loud noises (IE, clicking, whirring, whistling...). If so, the drive is likely damaged and it may require some recovery tools (software or hardware).

You may want to try rebooting your machine after having connected the disk as well.

SupermanTB

ASKER

The drive is not in an external enclosure. It's an IDE hard drive that was in a laptop. It appears to be spinning properly. No funny noises. when I boot to it, I get a Window startup error. So the drive definitely appears to be functioning.

I have tried rebooting my machine.

Britt Thompson

Hmmm...do you have anything on the IDE bus along with this drive in your computer? You may be running into a master/slave issue.

Is the drive showing as "Online." If not, you have to bring the device online before it will allow you to do anything with it.

SupermanTB

ASKER

My IDE knowledge is very rusty. I don't remember if you have to make a laptop hard drive a slave in order to open it on another computer. I definitely don't see any jumpers on there.

The drive is not showing online as I'm unable to initialize it.

Britt Thompson

It should set itself to master by default. If you remove anything else off the bus and use the primary connector on the IDE cable it may work.

If it were me, I'd drop it in a USB enclosure to avoid all this hassle. It could be a driver issue as well with your system if you don't have any IDE devices in there already.

nobus

IDE drives can be : master -slave or C/S
you can have only 1 master, and 1 slave on an IDE cable,
so : is there another device connected to the cable where you connected this laptop drive? (eg cd drive?)
if there is, try with ONLY this drive connected
or give more info on your setup : how and what is connected

noxcho

Jumper set has nothing to do here. The drive is not able to initialize. And master/salve jumper set is important for booting from this drive.
How did you hook it to the Win 7 machine? USB enclosure or internally?

nobus

i disagree noxcho - if there are2 drives set to M or S, you will have this kinfd of problems

noxcho

Would he not have problems at boot up process then? From his description it looks as he is already in Windows Disk Management and he sees the drive there. It won't initialize simply. And this normally happens if the drive gets not enough power or the drive itself is bad.

SupermanTB

ASKER

Let me shed some light as it appears I've improperly answered one of the questions. I was asked whether or not the hard drive is in an enclosure, I incorrectly answered No.

The device I'm using doesn't actually enclose the IDE hard drive. There is an IDE connector to the hard drive and then connects to the Windows 7 computer via USB. That's my mistake as I strictly looked at the word enclosure and didn't consider the implication of the question. Sorry about that.

Hope this sheds some light.

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noxcho

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nobus

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SupermanTB

ASKER

I was unable to retrieve the data by any methods listed here. I sent the drive off to a recovery expert to get everything. Points awarded for effort. Thanks guys!