How to use a corrupted hard drive as an external hard drive

[lbdywrkr]

Hello,
I was told by Microsoft Technical support (regarding a corrupted hard drive
I have)
that I could go to a friends computer and hook up the corrupted drive as an
external hard drive and be able to have access to the files stored on the
drive that way.
I have two questions. 1) How is it that the information will be available
using it as an external hard drive when it is corrupted and unavailable to me
as a boot drive?
2) When using this drive as an external hard drive, how do I hook it up?
Does it go on the same interface cable as my new hardrive? Like a slave? Do
I just attach it and boot the computer like normal?
The tech support guy just told me I could do it, he didn't tell me how to to
do it.
Running Windows Xp Home Edition SP3 with new Seagate 250 GB Pata/100 and
Western Digital 120 GB as the corrupted drive.
I would love to be able to have access to the files on the corrupted drive
and if possible use that drive for storage and to back up files.
Is this possible? And how do I do it?
Thank you in advance for any guidance you can give me as I am technically
challenged and attaching all the cables correctly is a challenge.
My apologies if I have posted this in the wrong place.

 

[smlunatick]

Hello,
I was told by Microsoft Technical support (regarding a corrupted hard drive
I have)
that I could go to a friends computer and  hook up the corrupted drive as an
external hard drive and be able to have access to the files stored on the
drive that way.
I have two questions. 1) How is it that the information will be available
using it as an external hard drive when it is corrupted and unavailable to me
as a boot drive?
2) When using this drive as an external hard drive, how do I hook it up?
Does it go on the same interface cable as my new hardrive? Like a slave?  Do
I just attach it and boot the computer like normal?
The tech support guy just told me I could do it, he didn't tell me how toto
do it.
Running Windows Xp Home Edition SP3 with new Seagate 250 GB Pata/100 and
Western Digital 120 GB as the corrupted drive.
I would love to be able to have access to the files on the corrupted drive
and if possible use that drive for storage and to back up files.
Is this possible? And how do I do it?
Thank you in advance for any guidance you can give me as I am technically
challenged and attaching all the cables correctly is a challenge.
My apologies if I have posted this in the wrong place.

You will need to remove the "defunct" drive out of the PC. Then,
locate an external enclosure that will convert the drive into a USB
drive. Once you then connect the external drive, it should show up as
a normal USB hard drive. If you are lucky, you may be able to access
the data right a way. If not, you will need a disk recovery system,
such a TestDisk.

 

[Michael W. Ryder]

Hello,
I was told by Microsoft Technical support (regarding a corrupted hard drive
I have)
that I could go to a friends computer and hook up the corrupted drive as an
external hard drive and be able to have access to the files stored on the
drive that way.
I have two questions. 1) How is it that the information will be available
using it as an external hard drive when it is corrupted and unavailable to me
as a boot drive?
2) When using this drive as an external hard drive, how do I hook it up?
Does it go on the same interface cable as my new hardrive? Like a slave? Do
I just attach it and boot the computer like normal?
The tech support guy just told me I could do it, he didn't tell me how to to
do it.
Running Windows Xp Home Edition SP3 with new Seagate 250 GB Pata/100 and
Western Digital 120 GB as the corrupted drive.
I would love to be able to have access to the files on the corrupted drive
and if possible use that drive for storage and to back up files.
Is this possible? And how do I do it?
Thank you in advance for any guidance you can give me as I am technically
challenged and attaching all the cables correctly is a challenge.
My apologies if I have posted this in the wrong place.

Depending on how the drive is corrupted you might be able to "fix" it
while it is still in the computer. I used Spinrite the last time I had
a corrupted drive that would not boot. The program fixed the problems
with the drive so that I could use Ghost to move the data to a new drive
and then retired the failing drive.
You might also be able to install the drive as a slave without having to
use an external case and access it that way.

 

[Patrick Keenan]

Hello,
I was told by Microsoft Technical support (regarding a corrupted hard
drive
I have)
that I could go to a friends computer and hook up the corrupted drive as
an
external hard drive and be able to have access to the files stored on the
drive that way.

Yes, this is common practice.

I have two questions. 1) How is it that the information will be available
using it as an external hard drive when it is corrupted and unavailable to
me
as a boot drive?

Because the corruption may be to the boot sectors and the data is available,
or *recoverable*, if the filesystem is damaged, using recovery software.

2) When using this drive as an external hard drive, how do I hook it up?

Either with an external adapter, a case, or on the internal cables.

Does it go on the same interface cable as my new hardrive? Like a slave?

If it's an IDE drive, yes, jumpers have to be adjusted. Sometimes you can
disconnect the CD/DVD drive and use that connector.

Do
I just attach it and boot the computer like normal?
The tech support guy just told me I could do it, he didn't tell me how to
to
do it.

You can attach it with a USB2 case, or to the internal cabling if there are
connectors available. You may have better results (faster and more
reliable) using the internal cabling.

Running Windows Xp Home Edition SP3 with new Seagate 250 GB Pata/100 and
Western Digital 120 GB as the corrupted drive.

You need to have lots of space on the drive you are recovering to. 250 gig
may not be enough.

If you can't just read the files, stop. You will in that case need to use
recovery software. This is often available in a demo version, that lets
you determine what it thinks it can recover. If you're happy, you then pay
them for the unlock codes. I use R-Studio, and it works well for me.

I would love to be able to have access to the files on the corrupted drive
and if possible use that drive for storage and to back up files.

Drives are cheap now. I would suggest that if the drive failed, it doesn't
meet the standard required for backup.

An alternative approach is for you to get a new hard disk now (where I am,
500 gig drives are as low as $70), set your damaged one aside, install the
new one, install XP and your apps and anti-virus software. *Then*, attach
the old hard disk and attempt recovery.

This gets you a working system and reduces the number of steps in data
recovery and transfer.

Is this possible? And how do I do it?

Yes, and see above. It's actually simple if you have the parts and
understand how to use them.

Thank you in advance for any guidance you can give me as I am technically
challenged and attaching all the cables correctly is a challenge.

If that's the case, don't be afraid to ask someone else to do this for you.
It isn't a complex task, but does take a little skill.

HTH
-pk

 

[Paul]

Hello,
I was told by Microsoft Technical support (regarding a corrupted hard drive
I have)
that I could go to a friends computer and hook up the corrupted drive as an
external hard drive and be able to have access to the files stored on the
drive that way.
I have two questions. 1) How is it that the information will be available
using it as an external hard drive when it is corrupted and unavailable to me
as a boot drive?
2) When using this drive as an external hard drive, how do I hook it up?
Does it go on the same interface cable as my new hardrive? Like a slave? Do
I just attach it and boot the computer like normal?
The tech support guy just told me I could do it, he didn't tell me how to to
do it.
Running Windows Xp Home Edition SP3 with new Seagate 250 GB Pata/100 and
Western Digital 120 GB as the corrupted drive.
I would love to be able to have access to the files on the corrupted drive
and if possible use that drive for storage and to back up files.
Is this possible? And how do I do it?
Thank you in advance for any guidance you can give me as I am technically
challenged and attaching all the cables correctly is a challenge.
My apologies if I have posted this in the wrong place.

When a drive is being used for booting, if any of the files critical to booting
are missing or damaged, you won't be able to boot.

If instead, you take the hard drive to another computer, and connect it as a
"data" drive, the "good" boot drive on that computer, takes care of the booting
part. Then, you can look at the bad drive, as a "data" drive if you want.
That would allow you to copy off important files, or use recovery or repair
utilities.

My personal preference for drive recovery, is to connect the drive to an internal
cable in the good working computer. That way, there is no USB interface to
complicate matters. For example, you can connect the drive to an internal
connector (either a ribbon cable connector, or a thin SATA cable). Then,
when the computer starts, enter the BIOS on the "good" computer, and you
should see the identity string in the BIOS screen. If the bad drive is not being
detected, then you would know there are serious issues with the bad drive
(issues requiring physical data recovery).

If you use a USB enclosure, and the drive refuses to respond, then looking
at the available info in Device Manager, may be less conclusive about the
total failure of the drive. I like the BIOS level test instead.

If you want another test environment, you don't have to move anything from
its current location inside the computer. You can use a Linux LiveCD to boot
the computer, in place of booting from your bad hard drive. Some Linux
environments include a copy of "testdisk", for partition repair if it is
needed (that is where the partition table, doesn't match the partitions
as they exist on the disk). Recent versions of Linux are also able to
mount FAT32 or NTFS volumes read/write, so you can copy data, make repairs
to OS files or whatever. I use a Knoppix Linux LiveCD for doing maintenance
on my WinXP disk.

OK, looking at your description, you say you have

1) Windows Xp Home Edition SP3 on a new Seagate 250 GB Pata/100
So, you're claiming you're able to boot from this drive, and the
drive works OK ?

2) Western Digital 120 GB as the corrupted drive
When booted from (1), is this drive visible in the file system ?
Can you see the WD disk listed in the BIOS screens for internal disks ?

If the drive is completely unresponsive, you may be able to get enough
information from your computer as it currently stands. If the WD 120GB
is not appearing in the BIOS, it could already be dead. You can try
moving it to another computer, but I wouldn't expect the symptoms to be
any different. After all, you're claiming (1) to be booting from a
good disk, and that would be no different from using some other
computer with a (1) "good disk".

Moving the disk to another computer, would be appropriate if you had
absolutely nothing to boot from. But since you have (1), there is no
point involving another computer in the recovery. With (1), you should
be able to observe and work on (2).

In summary, your next test, is to enter the BIOS, and see if both disks
are identified in the BIOS.

You can see in this BIOS screen, two hardware devices have responded.
One has a hardware ID of "IOMEGA ZIP 250", the other is more non-descript.
Your hard drive should be able to provide its hardware ID, and should
mention Western Digital or WD etc. That is the first step to working
on a drive - proving it is still responsive enough, to identify itself.

http://www.tritech.co.uk/support/kb/seaking/img/seanet-scu-bios-cmos-setup-screen.jpg

Paul

 

[Bob Harris]

A "corrupted" hard drive may be perfectly OK physically, but could have one
(or more) important files related to XP that are bad, or corrupted.

Thus, the drive may be OK for reading and even for writing, but it is not
good enough to run XP.

The simplest way to test the drive vs the operating system on that drive is
to boot the PC from a different operating system. If the drive were
formatted as FAT32, you could boot from a windows 98 or ME floppy.
Unfortunately, the drive is probably formatted as NTFS, which is the norm
for XP, so you need to boot with something that can read NTFS. My favorite
(free) different operating system is KNOPPIX, run from a "live" CD. Live
means that it runs directly from the CD, without installing anything on the
internal hard drive. By default you can only read internal hard drive, or
copy from them to external hard drives. That can be changed, but these
defaults make KNOPPIX safe to use.

KNOPPIX is available as one of two ISO image downloads. One is a CD-version
and the other is a DVD-version. The primary difference is that the DVD
contains a lot more applications programs. You your purpose, the CD-version
will suffice. Download, and use an option like burn-from-image to get the
ISO onto the CD. If you simply copy it, the CD will not be bootable.
KNOPPIX is available at: http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html
Other live CDs can be found at: http://www.livecdlist.com/

To boot from a CD, you >>may<< need to change the boot order in the BIOS
setting. Basically, CD must be before internal hard drive in the boot
order. But, your PC may already be set to do that. So, just try booting
from the CD. If that is ignored, then read the motherboard manual, PC
manual, or go to the PC maker's support website for information on how to
change it to boot first from CD.

Once it starts booting from the CD, sit back and relax. As a first try,
accept all defaults. KNOPPIX usually does a good job of recognizing
hardware, installing drivers (into RAM, not to hard drive), etc. In a few
minutes you should be at a LINUX desktop level. Look for icons of hard
drives on the left side. They will be named something like "hda1" or
similar. If you see a hard drive icon, try double-clicking on it to open it
in a file manager. If it opens, the odds are good that you can copy file
from it to an external hard drive, pen drive, etc.

If KNOPPIX can not read the hard drive, then either it is physically bad, or
maybe the partition table is bad.

At this point you could download disk testing software from the support of
the hard drive maker (Western Digital in your case). It is often available
as an ISO image of a bootable CD. Make the CD, boot, and run diagnostics.
WARNING: avoid destructive tests, such as anything that sounds like
"format", "erase", "low level", etc. The difference between XP, KNOPPIX,
and disk makers software is that the latter can often "see" and test disks,
even if they are unformatted, have an unknown format, or are otherwise
inaccessible via an operating system. Unknown format would encompass a
defective partition table.

If you conclude that the disk is OK, but the partition table is bad (and
that may be more guessing than conclusive logic), there are programs that
can fix such problems. This "table" is nothing but a bunch of 1's and 0's,
but a very important set. Search the web for "partition recovery". This
article might be a good place to start:
http://www.ntfs.com/partition-recovery-concepts.htm However, if you are not
sure what you are doing, it might be better to get some professional help to
at least diagnose, and maybe repair the table.

Note, if the partition is visible, but not all files are listed, it could be
that the MFT (master file table) is corrupt. This can >>sometimes<< be
fixed via the XP command "CHKDSK drive_letter /R". To do this, the hard
drive must be connected to a machine running XP. However, a connection via
USB is sufficient.

One could also boot from a live XP CD, such as "Bart's", but that can take
some effort to create. Another live XP-based CD is called "the ultimate
boot CD for Windows" http://www.ubcd4win.com/index.htm That also requires
the user to build a CD image, but is easier than a plain Bart's CD. At this
point you might ask why not just download a pre-made XP-based bootable CD?
Well, that would mean that someone, other than Microsoft, was effectively
giving away XP (or parts thereof), and would be a major violation of the XP
license. Microsoft would call this "piracy". In contrast, many LINUX
distributions are given away freely, and in many case one can also obtain
the source code, if desired.

Beyond CHKDSK, there are many programs than can search a hard drive for
files, even if the MFT is bad. Try a Google search on "file recovery". You
might also want to look at the "Major Geeks website", sub-category file
recovery. http://majorgeeks.com/

If the disk is physically bad, and there is vital information on it, there
are professional services that for a high price >>may<< be able to recover
data by mounting the magnetic platter in a different disk.

 

[Anna]

Hello,
I was told by Microsoft Technical support (regarding a corrupted hard
drive
I have)
that I could go to a friends computer and hook up the corrupted drive as
an
external hard drive and be able to have access to the files stored on the
drive that way.
I have two questions. 1) How is it that the information will be available
using it as an external hard drive when it is corrupted and unavailable to
me
as a boot drive?
2) When using this drive as an external hard drive, how do I hook it up?
Does it go on the same interface cable as my new hardrive? Like a slave?
Do
I just attach it and boot the computer like normal?
The tech support guy just told me I could do it, he didn't tell me how to
to
do it.
Running Windows Xp Home Edition SP3 with new Seagate 250 GB Pata/100 and
Western Digital 120 GB as the corrupted drive.
I would love to be able to have access to the files on the corrupted drive
and if possible use that drive for storage and to back up files.
Is this possible? And how do I do it?
Thank you in advance for any guidance you can give me as I am technically
challenged and attaching all the cables correctly is a challenge.
My apologies if I have posted this in the wrong place.

lbdywrkr...
Hopefully, the responses to date that you've received re your query have
given you sufficient background info re the problem you're experiencing and
given you some insight as to how to proceed to resolve this problem. So the
following may be nothing much more than a mere repetition of what you've
already "heard". If so, please ignore it.

1. First of all, since you've stated that you're "technically challenged"
and that's quite understandable when dealing with these PC problems, so if
it's at all possible it really would be helpful if you had a
friend/acquaintance at your side who has had some experience with PCs and
who could assist you as you go about trying to resolve this problem.

2. We'll assume that the problem drive in question - your WD 120 GB HDD - is
also a PATA (not a SATA) HDD.

3. Presumably your Seagate 250 GB HDD is your boot HDD; it boots without
incident and functions without any problems, right?

4. What I'm not clear about from your post is...when the WD drive is
connected in your system as a secondary HDD (therefore, non-booting), you're
unable to access its contents? It's not "seen", for example, in Windows
Explorer?

Is there some message you're receiving that the drive is "corrupt"?

5. Have you tried accessing XP's Disk Management utility - Start >
right-click My Computer > Manage > Disk Management?

The drive is not listed there? Or it is, but no drive letter has been
assigned to it?

6. At one time was that WD 120 GB HDD installed as your boot drive but later
you replaced it with the Seagate 250 GB drive, installing the XP OS onto the
latter? So that the XP OS is still installed on that WD drive?

7. Has this problem always existed after you connected the WD disk as your
secondary HDD in your system? Were you *ever* able to access its contents?

8. Are you reasonably certain that the disk is properly connected as a
secondary HDD in your system and properly jumpered? Are you generally
familiar with IDE channels and properly connecting/configuring hard drives
to such?

9. Are you aware that a HDD diagnostic utility is freely available from WD's
website? This program will help you to create a bootable floppy disk or
bootable CD which you could run and determine whether you're dealing with a
defective hard drive. If the WD disk is defective then it's likely the only
way you'll (possibly) be able to access data on that drive is to use one of
the data recovery programs, most of which are commercial programs.

If you're so inclined, respond to the above and we can go on from here if
you want to pursue this further.
Anna