How do I read a second partition on an external hard drive

eticket

Distinguished
Jul 9, 2011
4
0
18,510
Hello,
I had a laptop die win XP pro SP2 and I'm trying to recover the data from the hard drive. The drive was partitioned with applications and OS on one, data on the second partition. I put the disk in an external enclosure, and when I plug it into a win7 64 bit machine, I can only read the first partition. I saw an article that suggested going to disk managemnet and assigning the drive with no letter a letter, adn then it should show up, but it appears that that drive is only showing the first partition. any ideas?
 
Could we see the partition table?

You could use a disc editor such as DMDE to examine sector 0.

DMDE (DM Disk Editor and Data Recovery Software):
http://softdm.com/download.html

Choose your external Physical Drive.

Go to Tools -> Copy Sectors.

Click Device in the Source tab. First Sector should be 0. Change Number of Sectors to 1. The Last Sector should adjust itself automatically.

Choose File in the Destination tab. DMDE will select a filename of "sec_0_1.ima". Choose a destination folder on one of your other drives, not your problem drive. Click OK.

The IMA file should be 512 bytes in size. Could you please upload it?

Alternatively, if you're looking for a point-and-click solution, then try TestDisk or Partition Find and Mount.

http://findandmount.com/download/
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk
 

eticket

Distinguished
Jul 9, 2011
4
0
18,510
Thanks! I don't see how I can upload this file...I did manage to generate it.\\







 

John_VanKirk

Distinguished
Hi there,

Couple things to do that might solve the problem.

First if you can, attach it directly to your desktop compouter, if it's a SATA drive, that's pretty easy

Second thing is many times when a HDD Partition Volume specifically has a drive letter assigned to it, like 'E' on the laptop, when you attach it to a desktop that has that letter assigned, one won't show up initially.

Go to Disk Management, and in the lower graphical section, right click on the volume and unassign it's VolumeName and DriveLetter. Then reName the volume and reAssign a DriveLetter. May just pop up for you.

While you are there, report back what it says in the Volume Status column for the Drive, and what color the band is above it.
Should read something like " VolumeLabel, DriveLetter, size, NTFS, Healthy(primary etc)
 

eticket

Distinguished
Jul 9, 2011
4
0
18,510
It said it was a healthy active partition when I renamed it. I rebooted my machine for a differnet reason, and now it doesn't see the drive at all...I plug in the USB, my computer sees it is a hard drive, but nothing shows up in My COmputer


 

eticket

Distinguished
Jul 9, 2011
4
0
18,510
I used the partition find and mount, changed teh drive back to E: and I now see it again in my computer...but no luck getting to the other partition. When I used teh cgsecurity tool mentioned in another suggestion, I can see the data I want, but can't retrieve it. Do you think it's worth the $50 subscription, or is there more we can do to try to get it with native tools?
Thanks!
 
You could upload your files to an online file sharing service.

As for native tools, IMHO it is best to find out as much about the problem before attempting to fix it. Sector 0 will be a start in this direction. Its partition table should tell you the starting LBA of the first partition, and its type and its size. From this, we should be able to infer the location of the second partition, and so on.

Just be patient and careful. :)