I have a couple of hard drives which were used by my recently broken down desktop, would like to exact the photos from the hard drives. I hence bought a hard drive adapter from MSY. When I got home, one of the hard drives was saying the format needed to be updated before I could access to files, but if I changed the original format of the hard drive, the data would be wiped out, and other hard drive didn't have the removable hard drive icon appeared under my computer. Just wondering what I need to do in order to get the data out from those two hard drives. Much appreciate your help in advance.
Extract data from hard drives which were used by a broken desktop
Linfinity1101 on 24/04/2017 - 13:12
Comments
The old desktop was Win7 and the new one is using Win10
Pull the side off your current PC and plug the old drive(s) into a spare HDD connector.
The old HDD should then appear in Explore and you should be able to read the files.
The different OS will not be a problem as you will be "reading" files onlyif you're comfortable opening up your PC case, this is the easiest solution, may need to read the hard drive and set the jumpers to "slave" instead of "master" … alternatively, if you've got multiple hard drive ribbons connected to your motherboard, should be fine to connect it to the secondary …
Only other things to remember are to plug in power cable and if prompted to boot from hard drive, select your existing (probably the "Primary" "Master")
@weezlebub: you are referring to a very old, now obsolete Parallel ATA (PATA) disks. While the OP originally did not specify this, later he says that he bought a HDD SATA adapter. There is no Master/Slave with SATA (and no disk "ribbon" cable).
true, but he clarified that 10 minutes after my post …
it's been a long time since i've played with hardware
@weezlebub: Is that going to be ok if I connect the HDDs directly to the new Desktop Motherboard and the files will be allowed to be extracted?
So I don't need to use the adapter to connect the hard drives, only need to connect them from the new machine? I will try that tonight, thanks heaps!
You may need to use the adapter depending on the type/age of the drive. Regardless, it will not affect your ability to read the drive data
I use an extremal dock and plugging in drive does not always pick it up.
go to computer management
go to storage, disk management and once populated right click on disk management to refresh disks.Thanks, will try tonight.
If the adapter is only USB without power, it may not be giving enough power to the HDD's
What I bought from MSY was a HDD adapter with power cord which connected to HDD (SATA type) on one end and the other end with USB plug that I connected to the new desktop more like a removable hard drive, one showed the HDD needed to be reformatted under the Explorer which would wipe out all the current data before I could access it, and the other HDD I could see it was installed as a removable HDD, but couldn't be seen under the Explorer. Does my situation mean if I connect the HDDs directly to the new Desktop Motherboard, the files should be ok to be extracted?
The adapter should work - and it kind of works, as both drives are seen by Windows. Do what user sandp suggested above in second paragraph. Typically I would not expect different results when you connect the HDDs directly to motherboard, but it is worth trying.
Note also that there are many free disk rescue tools (Google, do a bit of reading), they are likely to give you better results.
So I can reformat the HDD to access it and then use a disk rescue tool to retrieve the files?
NO!
once reformatted you'd lose the files. You don't format.
If the drive is faulty, you'd need to use a data rescue program
if not you can just copy the files. If there is a lot of files to copy I'd either use Teracopy or use the Robocopy commandline.
robocopy <Source> <Destination> [<File>[ ...]] [<Options>]@scrimshaw: But currently I couldn't access to the HDD which kept asking me to reformatting the HDD before I could use it, any way to get around with it? Thanks!
@infinity1101: DO NOT format. This is Windows asking you to format - as I mentioned there are MANY (and many free) disk rescue tools on the Internet. Google, search, try some of them. You may start from here: https://www.lifewire.com/free-data-recovery-software-tools-2…
Do not expect a foolproof step by step instructions - you need to do your own research and tests.mount the drive but do not format. Use GetDataBack NTFS to try and recover the files https://www.runtime.org/data-recovery-software.htm
There is always the possibility that the adapter you bought from MSY could be faulty in some way.
What OS on the HD and on the rescue computer. Important info.