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General discussion

SATA Hard Drive Issues - PLEASE HELP!

by waltmackenzie Jan 7, 2010 1:18AM PST

Hello everyone. I have a 500gb WD External drive that I need to recover data from. I tried taking the drive out of the case and connecting it directly to the mother board (via SATA connection) and the drive will not show up at all anywhere (Device Manager, disk management, my computer). So I purchased a new external case and the drive shows up in the Device Manager under Disk Drives as a USB Device. It does not show up in Disk Management or My Computer.

The drive spins up fine and has no audible mechanical problems. I am connecting the drive to a computer with Windows XP with all it's needed updates. Does anyone have any ideas/suggestions?

Discussion is locked

5 Posts
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Look at the top post in this forum.
by r. proffitt Forum moderator Jan 7, 2010 2:00AM PST

Try the LaCie Miracle post.

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Tried Ubuntu...any other ideas?? Anyone??
by waltmackenzie Jan 7, 2010 6:54AM PST

"Try the LaCie Miracle post."


Although a very cool experience for someone who has never dealt with Ubuntu, this did not work. I tried the drive in an external case and also hooked directly to the computer (internal installation) Anyone else have any other ideas? I've tried several different Data Recovery programs and none of them recognize the drive. I brought it home to my home computer that has Windows 7 loaded and the drive will show up in Disk Management but it tell me I need to initialize the disk first. I'm afraid if I initialize I run the risk of further losing information. Anyone have any experience with initializing a drive in Windows 7? Thanks

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Whcih WD 500GB?
by r. proffitt Forum moderator Jan 7, 2010 7:02AM PST

It's looking grim if none of the solutions from free to demo like GETDATABACK, ZAR fail. You are fast approaching the call to drivesavers.com

But here's an old trick I have to add to the forum sticky one day. Ready? Put the jumper on the SATA drive to pull the speed back to SATA 1.x or 150Gbps.

I can't be more specific than that without an exact model number.

The last month seems to be all time records being set for members losing drives and files. Seems the lessons about backup are not getting out.
Bob

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Jumpers
by waltmackenzie Jan 7, 2010 8:09AM PST

The model number is WD5000AACS - WD Caviar GP 500 GB. It just boggles my mind that the drive will show up under Device Manager as a 'USB Device' but won't be recognized as a Storage Device. There has got to be something. Do you know anything about Disk Initilization on Windows 7? The drive does show up under Disk Management but will not allow me to do anything to it until I Initialize it. Any ideas? Thanks alot for your help.

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Sorry no.
by r. proffitt Forum moderator Jan 7, 2010 9:18AM PST

While I'm an embedded programmer, write assembler code, been writing apps since a GE-210 I only know that I use other than Windows to work such issues. It's very possible your adapter is not compatible so to test that you put other drives on it. If all fail, it's not any good.

Ok, the jumper. You do the search?
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=mozilla&q=site%3Awww.wdc.com+WD5000AACS+JUMPER&aq=f&oq=&aqi=

About initialize. That will surely wipe the drive clean. That's why I use Ubuntu to get the files out.
Bob

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