Re: How to convert external/USB hard drive to internal/IDE

On 10 Jun 2006 12:20:40 -0700, "Swaroop" <swaroop.rao@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

Hi:

I have a Western Digital USB hard drive, which had served me well for
2+ years. Recently, when I returned from a short trip out of town, I
found that my PC was not recognizing the hard drive and the hard drive
kept making a strange loud clicking sound, like the head was somehow
attempting to read the hard drive but failing. After several attempts,
I decided to try some alternative approaches to fixing the problem.
First, I tried connecting it to my Linux box, but I didn't know how to
access the device (/dev/usb??). Next, I took the bold step of opening
up the enclosure and found a plain ol' IDE hard drive inside. I
stripped the hard drive out of the enclosure. For this, I had to loosen
some screws and detach the drive from a circuit board. I'm guessing
that the circuit board provided the necessary power to the drive and
also acted as a convertor from USB to IDE. Then, I tried connecting the
IDE drive to my Linux machine and found, to my surprise, that Linux
recognized the drive without any configuration. I was able to mount it
and access the data on it without any problems. Next, I disconnected it
from the Linux PC and connected it back to my Windows PC (running
Windows 2000). In both cases, I connected the drive to the secondary
IDE controller with a master/only drive setting on the hard drive. But,
although my Windows PC recognizes the drive and assigns a drive letter
to it, it thinks that the drive is unformatted and prompts me to format
it whenever I access the drive. Why is this happening? What would be
the best way to recover the data on the disk?

It sounds to me like the data on the drive is damaged. I would try
something like r-tools.

Note that the drive is probably dying, get that data off as soon as
possible.
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Sata & Pata drives
    ... "Anna" wrote: ... 30 gb pata drives. ... since most of the newer motherboards are being equipped with only 1 IDE ... You didn't indicate what other IDE devices you will be connecting. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.hardware)
  • Re: I need some consultancy from someone with ATAPI design expertise
    ... the IDE interface is scarcely more than some buffer chips). ... don't recommend debugging an IDE driver twice:). ... > My personal preference would be to use linux as a development platform ...
    (comp.arch.embedded)
  • need guidance/suggestions setting up devel sys on Redhat 7.1
    ... Deluxe Workstaion boxed set. ... 13 GB HD type 47 IDE ... I listed the packages I want below. ... winders and linux boxes, but not neccessarily Free BSD can play on ...
    (comp.os.linux.setup)
  • need guidance/suggestions setting up devel sys on Redhat 7.1
    ... Deluxe Workstaion boxed set. ... 13 GB HD type 47 IDE ... I listed the packages I want below. ... winders and linux boxes, but not neccessarily Free BSD can play on ...
    (comp.os.linux.development.system)
  • Re: new to programming in Linux
    ... > Some of those benchmarks show Java can be OK. ... poster is looking for a nice IDE environment I can recommend Eclipse, ... I recommend learning about the linux api to ... chain to an IDE style tool. ...
    (comp.os.linux.development.apps)