Recovery Data from an old hard drive

I'm trying to recover photos and address books from the hard drive of an old XP Computer. The boot sector went on this drive. I'm hoping, I can install it on a windows 7 machine and access it like a slave hard drive. Unfortunately I'm a bit rusting in terminology and the data isn't mine.

I've installed it using a USB 2.0 to SATA/IDE Cable. This allows me to see it in the Device manager as disk 1 but it is asking for me to "intiialize" the disk. Is that the new process for partitioning and formating the drive?

If I allow it to "initialize" in MBR does that mean I'll lose the data?

The old system was a DELL desktop (don't know what model), with an 80GB seagate hard drive. I'm quessing it had two partitions (one FAT and the other NTFS). However, I can't be sure as I can't see a file structure.

Suggestions?

 

As far as Windows is concerned, it looks like your data is lost already. A Dell drive of that age (Pentium 3/4 and Win2K/early XP?) may have 3 partitions (one for the superhidden diagnostic tools, a second for Boot/Windows, the third for recovery (hidden?) or Data.

I don't think most freeware recovery tools would get anywhere with that drive from your description but there are two likely exceptions. Then there are Linux recovery tools.

What does Device manager say about this drive? Does it name it correctly? What is it jumpered for, have you tried different jumper settings (Master, Slave, Cable Select)?

 

Disk Manager sees it as Disk 1 which would be correct. It shows it as unknown and Not Initialized. I initially had it as cable select and it didn't read the drive. I then set it for master adn it again didn't see the drive. I removed the jumer all together and it was able to see the drive. This is the slave mode according to the label. I would assume that it would have an active partition with the boot sector, but if it's corrupt.....

 

Not Disk Manager - Device Manager, I need to know if the electronics board controlling the drive is being read correctly by Windows, what does Device Manager list it as?

 

It says under Disk Drivers, "USB to IDE/SATA Device USB Device"

 

Ok, no other listing for a disk drive?

Do you have an internal IDE connector on your motherboard?

Your CD/DVD drive(s) are SATA or IDE?

 

SATA. I didn't see an IDE controller.

 

And there's no other listing for a disk drive anywhere in Device Manager except your Windows drive?

 

Not that I could find or recognize.

 

Hmm, have you another drive to test on this adapter to see if Device Manager sees it differently?

I'm not 100% convinced that it has a 'good' USB chipset, it'll probably work fine with most software but backup, recovery and restore software can get flakey, or not work at all, with some generic USB adapters and external enclosures, especially if you have to boot from CD to run the software.

I don't have an adapter to compare with here now, but when I previously owned one, it showed a drive as a 'real' hard disk in Device Manager.

 

I was expecting to see the seagate listed under drives in Device Manager as well. However, it is what it is. I don't have another drive to test this cable. However, I was able to locate a CD with her back up files and get the images she was looking for from there. I appreciate the effort. I'm going to go ahead and initialize the drive more to see what it will do than anything else.

 

Ok, we'll try to recover the partitions first.

You're going to need Parted Magic and MBRWork but I'm not sure how you can run the latter yet, it used to be on Parted Magic, I don't see it on the current list.

 

Overlapping posts

Ok, your choice, if you initialise the disk, chances are it'll be 80GB raw, waiting to be partitioned and formatted - if not, and the partitions are there along with files - it's a miracle