Hard Drive Problems- Help Please!!!

I recently bought a new HDD for my laptop to increase the storage space. It is a secondary drive.

I'm quite well experienced with PC repair, but this one has me beat.

My OS is Vista 32 bit.

I removed the old drive and installed the new drive. Assigned a drive letter and hey presto, it worked. I then plugged my old drive in via a usb to sata adapter, and it could not be seen.

Using Diskpart in command prompt I can see the drive, but the MBR is set to all zeros.(see attached jpeg)

I really need to access stuff on this drive and I'm kicking myself that I didn't back it up before I removed it.

I have tried using GetDataBack for ntfs and this does not even see the drive. Using active@ file recovery for windows I can see the drive and it lists it as "82h 0B Hard Disk not ready" (see attached jpeg- problem drive is in a red box)

Can anyone help me to recover this drive to get the info off it that I need? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

 

Hard drives need more power than the USB spec allows for normal spinup and I'll bet it isn't (spinning up), albeit the not ready status.
I would connect the drive directly to a desktop box (the SATA connectors are the same) or put it back into the laptop to find out.

 

-I've tried that as well... The USB link I have has a seperate power supply unit that goes to the mains via a power supply so it's apparently got the full voltage.
I've tried every combination you can imagine- The drive in different PC's and laptops; I just keep getting the same MBR Zero's....

 

You tried putting the old drive back into the laptop and using the new one as external?

Did you try to fix the MBR with your vista disk?

 

OK, get FRHED ( http://frhed.sourceforge.net/ ) and inspect the drive. All that really needs to be in sector zero is one line of hex values near the end which will be the partition information and 55AA at the end. More importantly, sector 63 should be full of data with some readable strings of characters. That sector is the MBR. If it, too, is blank (zeros), we'll have to figure out what the drive was.
I use WinHex; but, FRHED should have a search function. Starting at the beginning (zero), search for 55AA as that string marks the end of both partition tables and MBR's. Take note of where it is found and post back.

 

Excellent, thanks. I will try that tonight.