Salvage files from IDE drive

O

oregon

Active Member
My dad brought home some IDE drives from work he wants me to get files off of. They are IDE though, and have XP installed on them. I have Vista, Mac, 2000. Would adding them into these systems do anything? Could I access the files that way?

What about running a Linux live disc and booting from that. Could I get files then?

The computers the drives were in are messed up, so I can't just use an external hard drive.
 
With one drive at a time slaved and the partitions unaccessible then you would need something like Knoppix live for cd to conduct data retrieval with a live distro over using a data recovery program like Active Undelete if needed. XP can read Vista partitions as well as Vista can read XP ones since those are both NTFS 5.0 seen there.

One old 2004 article sums up the idea of using Knoppix for pc rescue seen at http://www.shockfamily.net/cedric/knoppix/
 
I have Vista on a SATA drive. As long as this is selected as the primary boot device in BIOS, would that be okay? I don't think the drives have any jumper connectors.
 
Okay, I will do that. Is it safe to just hook them up to my computer, but not screw them into the case? And just have leave them flat on my desk or carpet?
 
I wouldn't lay it on the carpit but sitting on the desk or your computer case or even hanging from the cable should be fine while you pull data off of it.
 
Often what I do here to insure no accidents is simply slide the drive into a 3 1/2" bay and only put the two fasteners in on one side to secure it. You won't have to worry about the data cable being loosened up a little while moving around. If the case has a pull out drive bay that makes things easier where you simply slide the drive without any.

The Sata 1 type drives see a jumper for mode not cable position on those. The default for those is where the jumper is seen when bought or simply removing them. The other positions disable things like ATA150 support. The ide drives will have to be set according to the cable position like slave to a single optical drive unless the board has two ide channels there.

If you do get stuck on something back in here and let us know. Then we can coach you through it.
 
yeah, just plug them in and sit them on your desk. As long as you don't touch any metal to the circuit board, you'll be fine. Also you have to make sure that the drive is set on master for it to work.
 
If you have more then one ide channel you slave one of the ide models to another to see two new logical drives added long enough to grab files from more then one. That can save a little time if you have several drives to go through. With two in you may have to set the second to cable select depending on makes and models however.

The removable drive cages seen on many cases allow for simply sliding them in to prevent any esd problems without needing a phillips head screwdriver to secure them. Hopefully you have a place to set a case where you don't have to hang drives off of the ide cable to avoid finding the plug got pulled out a little simply when working and moving things around yourself.

If the drives are still found inaccesible review the article posted earlier on using a live distro for accessing stubborn partitions. One other thought there would be any security set inplace since those are or were company owned drives. Some data may be encrypted for that reasons like that.
 
Oregon, get one of those r-drivers. You don't want to be screwing around, mounting drives and playing with cables, etc. That's so old sk00l and retardedly pointless. Removable bays are so 1980's. That little unit I showed you is less than $20 and you can switch drives in seconds. It's the best thing since sliced bread. As I mentioned, you have to ensure the drive is set to master if it's IDE.

That thing does PATA, SATA and laptop drives. Believe me, you'll wonder how you ever lived without it. I can do data recovery out of my car now, and burn it to DVD. It saves so much time.

Of course if you're an amateur, I suppose you could always go spend the same $20 to get a removable drive bay that only supports one type of drive. Or you can spend hours pulling drives in and out of a case. Or you could do it the easy way for $15 :)
 
Yes, it does sound convenient and useful. However, I think I will only use it this one time, and I would have to wait a week to even get it. I will try doing slaving the drives with an IDE cable in one of my removable drive bays. If that fails then I may buy it.
 
Okay, I slaving the two IDE drives with one cable, but it wouldn't boot, and only one would show up in the BIOS. Then I disconnected one and it worked after a checkdisk. Then switched and did the other. Thanks for all the help. It did seem to take a while though. I was only getting 5MB/s max transferring from a PATA to a Western Digital Passport. Is this normal for a system like mine? How fast do all your systems transfer files?
 
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If you put two drives at once on the ide cable the lack of detection of one may simply be the jumper setting or that one drive has a problem. Often when trying to take stuff off of an old drive the transfer rate will slow(why some hate copy + paste) with a drive seeing a 5400rpm speed or even the older 4200rpm drive speed. Plus add in wear and tear on the drive heads is now taking it's toll.

Here while running a master and slave for storage on the primary ide cable on an older build I simply slaved a third HD to the optical on the second ide in order to rescue files from it for someone. So stating that an ide drive "must be" always set as master is way off. Even on boards with only one ide channel a drive can be slaved to the current optical if needed. Jumper settings will play the largest role.
 
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