Hard drive not showing as a drive when connected.

[MuleShack]

Im doing some work for a friend and trying to get some files off a couple old hard drives. I have the cord that connects ide to usb port. Ive used recouva program beforr to get data off of other drives, but in order to use it, the drive must be initialized. These drives show up as a drive letter but when I go into administrator , disk management to initialize it throws an error. There are 3 drives and it is hard to believe they all would be corrupt. What are issues that would prevent a drive from being accessed?

How does an encrypted drive react when hooked up?

Is it possible that the drive is in a different format than my computer?

I have a built computer with W7 64 bit and 3 hard drives built in all Ide, not in an array or none of that stuff. The one drive that im trying to pull from was on a w7 machine. First time I hooked it up I could see the users folder but clicking on it it gave security error, but after that it wouldnt even show that. Only the drive letter and no data useage.

Is there special software needed in some instances or do I need to mount the disk and try to boot from it? If I cant get it to recognize it via usb, it doesnt seem reasonable that it would recognize it direct?

[upnorth]

Coming with windows 7 putting a drive in a different PC and accessing data is not as easy as it used to be. Not sure what the process is.

Encryption? Oof, that may not be possible without the software that did the encryption or if it is windows you may need to have the original encryption key.

[fishnowworknever]

What's the error?

From what I remember, an encrypted drive will show up as a drive but you won't be able to access or see anything on it.

[delcecchi]

So it is an IDE drive connected by some sort of cable thing to an external USB port? Is it in a case with power? Or is power from someplace else?

Just trying to get a picture of what you are doing exactly.

[MuleShack]

So it is an IDE drive connected by some sort of cable thing to an external USB port? Is it in a case with power? Or is power from someplace else?

Just trying to get a picture of what you are doing exactly.

Sorry, I had that wrong. It is a Sata plug.

I have one of those two cord deals from Micro Center, where one plug goes to the outlet with a transformer and then plugs into the wider slot, and then the Sata plug from drive to USB in computer.

I'm going to run the dogs now, but will get back to this later and post some pictures of error messages etc.

The drives are all Samsung internal hard drives. Guessing the older ones had XP or vista on them as an operating system, and the newer drive was said to originally be vista and then was upgraded to W7. There was no mention of having encrypted disks...so that is what makes it so weird.

[delcecchi]

Could they be compressed? And I still don't get how it gets from sata to usb. Guess I need to do some research. Ah, there is lump in the cable. I see now.

[MuleShack]

Here is the set up I'm using to connect. I have done this for another friends drive that was corrupt and used Recouva on it. It showed up as a drive in the computer and I was able to access it.

I dont know how to tell if it was compressed.

[upnorth]

If it is encrypted it will be a struggle. Rarely is any drive compressed these days with the size of drives out there.

If you can get the username/password if the profile was password protected that would be a start. If you right click on the folder can you get to properties then security? If so you can try going to advanced then owner and take ownership.

[MuleShack]

The one HD shows up as Drive F and a message comes up that says I need to format the drive before I can use it.

I think these 2 old ones are dead or corrupt.

I'll have to wait to get the other one back to check it out again. That one bogged down my system when I plugged it in and it only showed the drive letter with no other info.

[upnorth]

It has been a while since I messed with something like this things may have changed, but are the drives set to be cable select, slave or master? To make this work, you may need to set the to slave or master depending instead of cable select if that is even set.

[MuleShack]

It has been a while since I messed with something like this things may have changed, but are the drives set to be cable select, slave or master? To make this work, you may need to set the to slave or master depending instead of cable select if that is even set.

If your talking about my system, I didn't use the slave / master thing. If your talking about the drive i'm trying to get access to, how can you change that?

[fishnowworknever]

It has been a while since I messed with something like this things may have changed, but are the drives set to be cable select, slave or master? To make this work, you may need to set the to slave or master depending instead of cable select if that is even set.

There is no Slave/Master with the new SATA drives as far as I know.

Try and run: compmgmt.msc

Then under storage>Disk Management what is the status of the drive? Does it show healthy? Can you right click on the volume and choose a different drive letter?