Hard disk failure - possible to retrieve data?

[truenorth]

Labprincess, Another thought just occurred to me --perchance do you have your broken laptop and your working desktop on a network?(ethernet connection).If so have you tried to see if the working desktop can see the H/D of your broken laptop? truenorth

[amandalee]

Thanks, Truenorth.  As far as I can tell, the enclosure gets its power from being hooked to the laptop.  One with an external power source would probably be better, but I was too impatient to order the one you linked to and wait for it to be delivered, and Compusa's selection kind of sucked.
Anyway, the enclosure is being recognized as new hardware when I hook it to the computer.  It is recognizing it just as a USB device, but not as a disk drive with a letter attached.  For example, my new internal hard drive is C:/ the CD/DVD drive is D:/ my external hard drive is F:/ and other devices like my digital camera and my iPod all show up in "My Computer" as drives with some letter named, but the old HDD in the enclosure doesn't.  The computer doesn't seem to be recognizing it as a disk with information on it.
As for partitioning, the old HDD only had one partition, and some unpartitioned space, IIRC.  It only had 30 GB of space total.  As part of my previous efforts to fix this problem, I tried reinstalling XP on the computer before I removed the old HDD.  It gave me an error message saying that the file system was corrupt and setup was unable to format the disk, or something like that.  That might mean the disk is too far gone to recover anything, but when I have it hooked to the laptop I can hear the old HDD trying to spin up, so maybe there's still hope.
Unfortunately, I don't have a home network, just the one laptop.  I was going to try and hook the broken laptop up to the network at work, or even just my desktop computer here, but couldn't because of various security protocols.    Now I have a working laptop, thanks to the new drive, but can't seem to access the data on the dying/broken old drive.  Frustrating.  Would Norton Ghost or other recovery software be of any help here?
This is definitely one of those "character building" experiences, haha.  Thanks again for the help.

[truenorth]

Labprincess, Well what you have said tells me this-your computer is recognizing the"case"(which of course is the "USB" external device).However how it can possibly detect the contents of that case when the content is what was an internal H/D which did require power (electric) and now all it is getting to the case is the power through the USB port---Hmmmm me thinks that the power from the USB port would not replicate that which it was getting through it's internal power cable from the computer's power supply.Which is why (if i'm right) that the actual dieing harddrive may not be being recognized--as without adequate power to it to run it it is just a bunch of metal and plastic parts sitting in a case.Not having had the actual experience (which i guess by now you are getting tired of hearing) that is my best guess --unless of course it is caused by the dieing H/D actually being dead.No there is no point in buying or using Ghost at this stage as your H/D (the dieing one) would have to be in some computer where it was working in order for Ghost to be of any value.On the case you bought --pick up the phone and call the actual Compusa store that you bought it at and ask for the tech dept. and ask them if there would be sufficient power at a computer USB port to power what had been an internal H/D in a computer--if my theory is correct the answer should be no.In which case you might be more successfull with one such as the one i linked you to--meanwhile if the answer is no --put it back in the box and take it back to Compusa on your next trip over there.They will take it back. I don't know where you are but if you have access to a Fry's store they definitely will have the powered type.Don't give up on that H/D yet as it has not been proven conclusively that it is beyond use. Good luck,truenorth

[amandalee]

Silly me, the HDD enclosure came with 2 USB plugs--both of them need to be connected in order for it to work.    Interestingly, the data recovery software (some free program I got from download.com) is calling the old drive @C, which is weird, but it seems to be working, albeit very slowly.  I let it run all night and when I got up this morning it was still trying to find data on the old disk...so I'm crossing my fingers that this is almost over. Thanks for all the help.
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[truenorth]

Labprincess,You are welcome glad i could assist.Hope you do get the data you are going through all this trouble for.Please let us all know by final post if you DID retrieve it(even if only in part).You might want to concider now that you own that piece of hardware keeping an eye out for an internal H/D at a bargain price. Every now and then places like Compusa and Fry's etc put on a special where after the rebate they end up being almost free.That way not only would you have a portable H/D(as compared to off the shelf externals which are still relatively expensive) but it makes an excellent medium for back ups.I am assuming that the reason for the dual usb connections are to provide the electric current of sufficient amount to actually run the contents of the case (but as i have not---- well you know the rest) i am looking forward to going to Fry"s near Atlanta in a couple of weeks to get a couple of those thingys. I have a number of computers which for one reason or another i am no longer using but i will salvage the H/D's and put them in cases and voila i will have some more external H/D's.There is also similiar cases to convert internal optical drives to external as well --around the same price.Now if only some forum member would help me resolve my Sony Vaio problems on the software posts. truenorth

[amandalee]

Good idea about putting a HDD in the external case, Truenorth.  You can never have too much extra space to back files up (something I will be doing religiously now  )
I'll post the final results of my adventures in data retrieval, as it should be interesting.  If the program I'm using right now doesn't work, I have trial downloads of about a dozen others.  Maybe between them I'll get most of my data back, haha.
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