help with retriving data off a old hdd

Hi! Newbie here, I have a Maxtor HDD that was is a old DataLCD computer,
The hard drive, If memory serves me has win 95 on it. All I want are the pics and vids on it.

HDD:

Maxtor 3.5 series 60GB diamondmax plus 9 ATA/133

Lap tops available to me:

Dell inspirion 6000 running XP sp2 home edition.
Gateway tri core running windows 7 home.

set up:

Using a Cables to Go USB to IDE/SATA line.

Ok, so this is what I get on trying it with the dell.
Disk 1
57.27 GB
online
Healthy (GPT Protective Partition)


http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v303/SG_Niner/screenshot1.jpg

On the Gateway the blue bar is black

And YES! I changed the jumper to slave and cable and nothing.
I know I need to assign a letter path for it but that option is grayed out
so I can not click it. Actually the only right click options are Help and Properties.
Please keep your reply to simple words as if you were speaking to a child. This way I don't have to translate Geek to Newbie via Google.
I have read about the formatting of this drive that states data loss,
Is that a 100% wipe or is there a chance of retrieving the data using a program like recuva or such after the formatting? Thanks!

 

Greetings, SG_Niner.

As far as I know, GPT Protective Partitions are not mountable from within Windows XP. I don't understand, though, why the Win7 machine is not accessing the drive.

One thing you might try is booting to a live Linux environment, from which you may be able to transfer the data in question to a flash drive.

Ubuntu is fairly straightforward, and that page lists the steps for creating a bootable disk. You'll have to have some software that will burn disks as an image file (.iso) - if you don't already have an image-burning tool, a good freebie is ImgBurn.

Once you've made a bootable Ubuntu disk, boot to that disk (you don't have to install Ubuntu, just run from the CD) and attempt to mount the Maxtor drive. If Ubuntu can mount it, you should be able to explore the drive and transfer any files to a flash drive.

If that's successful, you may then be able to use some low-level partition management software to format the drive and make it usable.

 

Thanks guy's, I will give them a try on thursday and let you know how it turns out.

 

This looks like the only software that may be able to convert from GPT to MBR disk without data loss (scroll down).

If this HD came out of an old machine then it should not be a GPT disk and it is some sort of mistake. I would try the live linux and see if it can read the disc normally before doing anything else. Maybe also burn a boot disc version of Partition Wizard and see if it can read the partition and sees it normally.

If linux can't read the disk and the data is important I would try to put it in a PC bypassing the USB cable to rule that out as the problem. If you don't have a PC you may be able to get someone to let you hook it up as a slave for a few minutes just to see if it is recognized.

I can't help but think this is a fluke rather than a genuine GPT partition.