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I have a 3.5" Western Digital My Book 500gb external hard drive. I gave it to a friend of mine, and he broke the USB port in it. I went to a nearby comp repair shop and had him solder the thing, and it didn't detect when it when I plugged it into my Dell Inspiron laptop. I recently saw about the 3.5" SATA to USB enclosure, so I went to check it. Strangely, when its placed in the enclosure, its not detecting in Windows. Also, when it was put as secondary (I'm guessing slave) to the shop fellow's desktop, it shows up in the BIOS and while starting, but then again doesn't show in Windows 7. The guy told me that I need to use a data recovery tool to get my data back.
P.S. Whe WD hard drive doesnt have an OS, just data. So my question is: Can I slave the drive to my Dell laptop and try to recover the data, and if so how? I would really appreciate it any help, thanks in advance.
does it have a usb interface or a sata interface? you say you put it in an enclosure, is that enclosure for drives with a sata interface? – barlop – 2012-03-29T10:02:48.807
yes, the enclosure is for sata hard drives 3.5" and it connects with the half of my hard drive surface to convert it to usb which was connected to the laptop.....my sata hdd has sata interface, the enclosure provides a usb interface for laptop – AJ HDD – 2012-03-29T10:21:10.267
how about you get another usb-sata adaptor.. doesn't have to be an enclosure. With ATA hard drives and probably SATA ones too, Using a USB adaptors and plugging it in USB can sometimes be more forgiving when it comes to seeing data on a faulty hard drive. – barlop – 2012-03-29T10:28:32.147
is there a way to make the 500gb hdd a slave to my dell inspiron laptop (like how the shop fellow did with his desktop pc)? and then similarly, when he turned on the desktop, it showed up in the bios and startup screen but didnt show in windows....if i slave it to my laptop, what can i do to resolve that issue? i wanna recover my data and then format it for removing errors...i dont wanna lose the data – AJ HDD – 2012-03-29T10:35:31.310
@barlop, thanks a lot for guiding me thru this – AJ HDD – 2012-03-29T10:35:59.173
the word slave applies more for ATA drives and ATA cables than SATA drives. Laptops are fiddly. and may not have a second port to connect it. you're better off trying to connect it to a desktop, but better than that, you're got more chance trying to connect it with USB, so you could get a new USB - SATA Adaptor. – barlop – 2012-03-29T11:16:55.113
@barlop, but even if i do connect it via usb, it is not showing up(detecting) or in "safely remove hardware".....so in that aspect, i am guessing it is similar to not showing up in windows when the comp shop fellow's desktop pc windows starts up..... – AJ HDD – 2012-03-31T15:33:28.060
Contrary to your guess that it's the same chance of working, What i'm telling you is that with a PATA drive, and USB-PATA adaptor i've had a drive detected and read, where it couldn't get read from connecting it to PATA directly. So the same probably applies to SATA. Why - who knows - maybe the drive has to do less on an electronic level - Why - who knows. – barlop – 2012-03-31T19:19:32.410
thank u to both barlop and TheSavo....i was having college work(busy)....anyways i went to a different shop and got a sata o usb enclosure. when i went my computer>manage>disk management> the 500gb drive came up as a new drive (unallocated) and "without formatting" and doing a MBR(master boot record) file system, i managed to make it a healthy(raw) partition......that much is good...but problem is when i try to access the drive f: in my computer, it says i need to format and then use it..... – AJ HDD – 2012-04-07T09:09:35.260
my question:
The question is what to do. Label it as possibly problematic with a sticky label, and you could run chkdsk on it, and you can plug it in internally and use speedfan.exe and look at the SMART data on it and don't put anything too important on it.. unless you trust it a bit, and that trust may come from chkdsk, smart data, and some use, and have a regular backup. Try recuva to see if you can see any data . If yes great. If not then either take it to a data recovery specialist or forget about the data and format it. "Can I use it normally by formatting" that's a stupid question. Try. – barlop – 2012-04-07T09:29:15.140