Disk recovery software

I suspect there will be a thread somewhere that covers this but I can't find it so here goes.

My son has had problems with an external hard drive USB connected.

Windows XP does not recognise it using explorer, but does show it when you look at the system drivers, albeit it does not report much more than a drive is showing.

I vaguely remember Norton utilities used to allow his software to bypass the usual start up stuff and allow you to interrogate and recover a disk as long as it would spin up.
I have looked around various current offerings that claim to do similar powersuite being one of them. each time I find equally negative feedback from user reviews

I am hoping the more serious tech guys/gals here can help.

I consider myself reasonably capable but am prepared to be educated!

We have tried putting the disk into another PC bay and accessing it, it seemed to spin but still not show anything

Of course it has some important stuff on that is not backed up or I would scrap it
thanks for any help Alan

 

Does it show up in Disk Management? If so you can right click it to allocate a drive letter. It should then appear in Explorer.

To access Disk Management, right click My Computer > Manage.

 

Have your tried the disk in another machine to ensure its not the Disk itself

Had problems in the past with a similar thing

An are you still using NORTON.... Kill it , Bin it, burn the bin, and shoot the rubbish collector.

Norton causes More problems than its worth ranging from Removable media to Netowrking

Try downloading Seatools and runnign a scan if that can see the HDD aswell this will alert you of any other problems on the drive.

And finally, Is the Device USB 2.0 and is there an option to run an external power into it.

If the device does not receive enough power it will show up in Device manager *via the USB* but wont function as removable storage

Good luck

 

Thanks for the tips, I will try them over the weekend.

Yes I have tried in another computer

I should have mentioned this has been working previously fine for some time (18months) so the USB power was sufficient but this could have been the issue until I tried it in another computer.

When I spoke of Norton I should have mentioned this was back in the day when Dos was king, and I knew what I was doing! and he was seen as a good guy back then who opened up the closed world of the inner workings of computers

thanks again

I note no one seems to have a view on powersuite? or any similar product.

I am intrigued to know what tools these data/disk recovery guys use (not bother about the file recovery bit as I am aware of a number of simple products here) The type of knowledge I seek is for the failed disk nature, as these firms seem to want loadsa money £100s

 

Ok few tips...

Have you ran Seatools, to see if that can access the drive ??
Is the HDD an external HDD or portable. If its external there may be a way of removing it from the enclosure and plugging it straight into a machine Via SATA or IDE.

The reason the good one want decent money is cos if its a sever HDD problem they have to take it apart in clinical environment and re set the HDD's mechanismns

Some jsut use simple tools or powerful computers to skip any redundancy within the drive and piece the file back together, i think the recovery rate is 1 loss in every thousand.

There are tools available online which are able to do this, however the good ones once again cost money.

Billy
www.technicure.co.uk

 

Powersuite was a useful tool- I tried many different tools over the years, and I seem to remember it had the old version of Disk Wizard on that- That is a useful tool on its own.
UBCD has so many tools, now, that I would think there are most on there, and that was a free download, when I last did it