Hard Drive Problems

[adamf154]

I currently have 3 hard drives that are not being recognised anywhere on my pc, if I put them into a docking station they are coming up as usb removable hardware, and I have connected them to my motherboard aswell at least 2 of the drives were working yesterday in another pc, my sata isn't set to achi its non raid, ive read something about that and changed it but the pc kept resetting itself, there is one hard drive that I would like to get info off of as it is my back up drive but they wont come up anywhere so if anyone knows of a way that I can get them to come up or salvage the info on them then please let me know

Thanks in advance for any help

[hello_hello]

I couldn't quite work out what you've tried. Have you only connected the drives in question via a docking station or have you connected them directly to your MB (via a SATA cable)?

USB docking stations can show up as removable disks and have a drive letter assigned without a drive inserted, and when you try to access them you'll be asked to insert a disk. The same thing can happen if the drive in the docking station isn't working properly.

You possibly can't change the SATA controller from IDE mode to AHCI mode for a drive running Windows or the PC mightn't boot, unless you can change it for specific SATA connectors (or if the MB has more than one SATA controller), but I'm fairly sure non-OS drives should continue to work either way.

You might have to explain what you've tried with a little more detail. How large are the drives? If you've connect one to the MB via SATA and you boot to the BIOS configuration can you see it, or can you only see the drive(s) previously connected to the PC?

[aedipuss]

when powered up do the drives motors spin? do the make any noises? when hooked up by sata to the mb you might have to look in computer management to find them if windows thinks they are un-formatted. control panel/administrative tools/computer management/disk management

[adamf154]

its not showing up when I go to boot in bios and there is nothing showing up in disk management, actually I cant here them at all

[aedipuss]

if you plug in the power cord and there is no noise and no resistance if you try to turn them the platters aren't spinning and the drives are dead.

[adamf154]

ok is there anyway to retrieve the data

[aedipuss]

yes but it's expensive. you can send them to a data recovery company to remove the platters and put them in a working drive. i don't recommend trying it at home as it needs to be done in a clean room.

[ndjamena]

3 hard drives out of how many?

What "other" pc were they working on?

[adamf154]

i have 2 pc's both with 2 hard drives each, one had a psu die last week, so i put 1 off the 2 into the other pc cause it had all my files on it and i put the windows disk from the broken pc in to get some other files, and then i took that one out and left the other one in, the windows disk form the other pc is now also damaged by the look of it, so i cant put windows back on that it will just be used as backup

[lingyi]

ok is there anyway to retrieve the data

You may be able to swap out the PCB with the EXACT SAME PCB (same model, same size) from other drive if the drive isn't mechanically damaged. When you remove the old PCB, look for brown or black spots or sniff for the typical electrical burn smell. From your last post, it seems the PSU may have fried the drives when it died.

[johns0]

You possibly can't change the SATA controller from IDE mode to AHCI mode for a drive running Windows or the PC mightn't boot, unless you can change it for specific SATA connectors (or if the MB has more than one SATA controller), but I'm fairly sure non-OS drives should continue to work either way.

You can change it from ide to ahci with a registry change,i have done that in the past.

[hello_hello]

You can change it from ide to ahci with a registry change,i have done that in the past.

I might have been remembering an XP issue that doesn't apply to newer Windows, because I don't think XP shipped with generic AHCI drivers. Or was it just RAID drivers? I can't remember.....

[DB83]

^^ Correct. XP does not support AHCI out of the box.

I have a dual boot system. The SSD for Win7 runs in AHCI mode but if I want to boot in to XP I have to turn that off in the bios else the system will not boot.

[cornemuse]

What shows up in 'computer management/disk management'? Without an assigned drive letter, drives wont necessarily show in 'my computer', but usually appear in 'computer management/disk management/device manager' In both, try 'rescan disks and/or 'scan for hardware changes'

I get (quite often) 'foreign drive' 'inactive' 'simple drive', with options of 're-activating' & 'assign drive letter'. These drives are connected via 'esata' (<- basically connected directly to mobo), with external power supplied.

Both 2.5 & 3.5 hdds do this to me.

-c-

[bevills1]

its not showing up when I go to boot in bios and there is nothing showing up in disk management, actually I cant here them at all

If it's not showing up in bios, there's either something wrong with the disk or with cable connections. Have you tried disconnecting and reconnecting cable to both the drive and the motherboard or tried different cables? At times I've had this kind of problem, and either disconnecting and reconnecting cables or using a different cable has fixed the problem.

[DB83]

The OP stated that the PSU in the PC he took the drives out of failed.

Could that failure cause a multiple disk-head crash ?

[Nelson37]

Head-crash, certainly, but that is not what this is. Total drive failure also common from power supply issues.

However - when dealing with four drives, and two PC's, identifying them with terms such as "the other one" and "the windows drive" is simply not sufficient. The OP's description of the testing of one, or two, defective drives in the functioning PC, along with problems on the Windows drive, from the defective PC, OR the windows drive, from the functioning PC, is inadequate, confusing, and indecipherable.

More information needed, clearer descriptions of what was done are necessary. Is "one of the two, and the Windows disk" the same as both drives from the defective PC? What does "took that one out and left the other one in" mean? How about "the windows disk from the other PC"? Since he is working on the functioning PC, does this mean the boot drive from the damaged PC, or the boot drive from the functioning PC?

No clear information on how to proceed, other than the OP has some sort of problem related to hard drives.

[DB83]

Yes. The OP's statements are vague.

But my interpretation is that the boot drive from the PC that has the PSU issue is also non-responsive - Post #9 - which makes me think that the drive(s) from that simply died when the PSU went tits up.

Maybe the OP will come back and enlighten us with simple info so that we are not double-guessing - a trait we see in so many topics.

[Nelson37]

My guess is that he either figured out he was doing something really stupid, or gave up and quit, or got professional help.

[Bjs]

ok is there anyway to retrieve the data

You may be able to swap out the PCB with the EXACT SAME PCB (same model, same size) from other drive if the drive isn't mechanically damaged. When you remove the old PCB, look for brown or black spots or sniff for the typical electrical burn smell. From your last post, it seems the PSU may have fried the drives when it died.

Note: it must absolutely have the same exact bios version or data corruption will occur.

Psu failure will not cause a head crash but leave the heads in the "non-parked" position which is why the note above is essential to recover data ... head crash requires physical force to bring heads into contact with platters.