've been asked to take a look at a laptop HD that has potentially died. I don't under what circumstances the drive went bad, just that the laptop was turned on one day and wouldn't boot. Quick trip to a PC store and the drive is out and into a caddy, but no joy.
The drive is a Hitachi DK23EA-30 (30gb) and the USB/IDE bridge is some cheap thing from Lexcron. Plugging the device into my computer reveals a USB mass storage device with a "Generic USB Disk USB Device" under it, but no volume and the drive doesn't appear in My Computer or under removable storage in the computer management msc. I had thought about plugging it into my computer directly, but of course the cables are utterly different. I'm going to put it back in the laptop tomorrow and attempt to the boot the laptop off a CD with drive fitness test on it. Hopefully it's still going to be seen by the laptops BIOS.
Apart from that, does anyone have any ideas or suggestions (apart from specialist data recovery agents) on how to get the data off the drive. It's very important to the drives owner.
The drive is a Hitachi DK23EA-30 (30gb) and the USB/IDE bridge is some cheap thing from Lexcron. Plugging the device into my computer reveals a USB mass storage device with a "Generic USB Disk USB Device" under it, but no volume and the drive doesn't appear in My Computer or under removable storage in the computer management msc. I had thought about plugging it into my computer directly, but of course the cables are utterly different. I'm going to put it back in the laptop tomorrow and attempt to the boot the laptop off a CD with drive fitness test on it. Hopefully it's still going to be seen by the laptops BIOS.
Apart from that, does anyone have any ideas or suggestions (apart from specialist data recovery agents) on how to get the data off the drive. It's very important to the drives owner.