Hardrive access

[SteveD]

Hi - my laptop recently died and I need access to it's hardrive - I have it linked into my home PC via a IDE Combo adaptor I just bought that goes into the USB port.

Disk Management is finding the hardrive, but it is not assigned a letter and I can not access it (it's not showing under "My Computer"). Under disk management it is listed as "Disk 6" and is showing as "healthy" and "active"., yet I simply can not access it anywhere. Even in Disk Management when the option is there to "open" it simply does nothing.

If I right click it to try to allocate a letter (which I thought may be the problem) the allocate letter option is not available.

If anyone is able to give any guidance I would be eternally grateful, as I'm tearing out my hair here!

My PC is an Advent Home media jobby, which I'm sure I paid for too much for from PC World, and I'm running Windows XP Media Centre Edition Version 2002 Service Pack 2.

Help! Please?
Steve

[patio]

I don't trust a USB connection for this operation...there are 2.5" to IDE connectors out there for about 10 or 12 bucks
Was the laptop also XP or MCE ? ?
You may want to try the other connector and see if anything changes in Disk Management...

[SteveD]

Hi - and thanks for the response. The Laptop was also XP - but running Home Edition.

the adapter I have is one that plugs to the IDE on the laptops hardrive (which i have out from
the Laptop) and it then plugs to the USB on my media centre PC. It is also seperately powered.

Oh, and I have tried other USB's on my media centre PC but that doesn't offer any difference.
Regards,
Steve

[patio]

Hooks it directly to an IDE connection on a desktop machine...

[SteveD]

Many thanks - I'll seek one out and give it a go. Would it simply be referred to as an IDE to Desktop connector?

[patio]

Yep. They should know what you need...

[SteveD]

Hi - just in case it's of any use to other readers in the future I managed to solve the Hardrive situation. Using the IDE Adaptor to the USB port.

The problem was I was running Norton Go Back on the Laptop, which was effectively blocking the access to the Hardrive from the Laptop. Using a partition edit executable (PTEDIT32.exe) I got online I was able to alter the access details for the Laptop hardrive (from 44 to 08 in the very top left hand box) that made Windows XP recognise the hardrive and has given me full access to my old files etc.

I suspect it will now have problems if I wanted to put it back into the Laptop, or that I would have to adjust it back to it's original settings, but the main concern for me was getting the info off the old hardrive.

I appreciate this is not a very detailed guide to how I fixed it, but I just thought I'd post this as a bit of a nudge in the right direction for anyone else who experiences similar problems in the future.

Suspect it's the skip for the Laptop now though...

Cheers to Patio for the responses last night.

All the best,
Steve

[patio]

Great News...

I had nothing but issues with GoBack and stopped recommending/using it years and years ago.
I now strictly use Acronis True Image for all my backup solutions and wouldn't go back to Symantec if they paid me...

Glad you're fixed up and stop by anytime...

[michaewlewis]

Great News...

I had nothing but issues with GoBack and stopped recommending/using it years and years ago.
I now strictly use Acronis True Image for all my backup solutions and wouldn't go back to Symantec if they paid me...

Glad you're fixed up and stop by anytime...

I've had tons of success with Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery... Just yesterday I restored a SQL server to a different computer with different hardware and everything. I didn't have any hardware problems at all..... Did I mention it was Symantec?
I would agree with you if you were staying away from norton though. Even though they're the same company, their corporate products are a lot better than consumer products.