IDE Data Recovery Help Please

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Shoween

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Jan 9, 2014
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So I've got a really old IDE hard drive with some really valuable videos and data on it, I purchased an internal IDE to SATA adapter and have that hooked up, however Disk Management says the disk is "Unknown, Unallocated and Not Initialized"

What can I do to access the drive and all of it's contents, without wiping the drive. Because I know that "Initializing" it will clear it.

I use Windows 8.1 and could really use some help asap.

This is what Disk management has to say:
mxW7nHt.png
 
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When Windows disk management detects the drive, does it show the filesystem as RAW? If so, then this is because Windows cannot detect the partition table entries to decide what filesystem it is using.

You can see a guide for a possible fix to this here: http://html5.litten.com/updated-how-to-fix-external-disk-drive-suddenly-became-raw/
 
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http://i.imgur.com/mxW7nHt.png

I believe the "File System is NTFS"
 
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Apologies, the image didn't load by the time I posted. Well I guess the drive could well be corrupted. Do you have a hard drive enclosure that you could put it into to see if it picks it up without formatting?

 
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The hard drive had never been used in a PC. It was removed from a old DVD writer which had a lot of valuable data on it, the machine being as old as it was had issues and crashed after being turned on for too long and there was no way to copy the files through the machine. So we removed the Hard drive to put in a computer, to then transfer the data off it, which leaves me with the issue of not being able to access the drive. When connected to the machine, I could still see the data on it. Which would mean it's not corrupt right?
 
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I wasn't aware that it was necessary to enable IDE in the BIOS.

After taking a look in my BIOS I couldn't find any setting to do with IDE.
 
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I've got one of these types of things..
http://alltroniccomputer.com.sg/images/Y-1033.jpg
http://usb.brando.com/prod_img/zoom/UUHDC000800_03_L.jpg
 
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I've got one of these types of things..
http://alltroniccomputer.com.sg/images/Y-1033.jpg
http://usb.brando.com/prod_img/zoom/UUHDC000800_03_L.jpg
 
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After changing the drives to IDE, there was no change, still couldn't access drive.
 
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As I'd said, the drive still works, at least it did on a DVD writer machine which it was removed from.
I'm only unable to access the drive in Windows, there must be a way around this.
 
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Can you describe the DVD writer? There's a good chance it wasn't using NTFS. Windows is pretty ignorant about other filesystems, and will pretend most of them don't exist and show the drive as unallocated.

Try installing a partition manager like Minitools Partition Wizard. Those will recognize more filesystems from other OSes. If this was a standalone DVD writer, more than likely it was running Linux and the disk is formatted as ext2.

Also, I haven't had much luck with IDE to SATA adapters. So if Partition Wizard doesn't show anything, I would try buying an IDE external drive enclosure and trying with the drive in that before giving up.
 
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Before proceeding, check the jumper on the HDD. The drive will have printed on it a diagram of how to set the jumper. Since this is the only IDE unit connected to that adapter, I expect you should set the jumper to make the drive a Master device (or Master with no slave present, if that's an option). I also expect that the adapter requires you to connect a power supply to the HDD. Some adapters do this for you, but others require you to connect a 4-pin Molex power connector from the PSU to the IDE drive unit.

There are few items here that confuse me.

1. You say it's "really old" and from a DVD writer (copier?) machine. Then you say you have information (from what?) that its File system is NTFS. That File System became quite prominent in the early 2000's with the intro of Win XP, although it certainly had been in use before that. So, how "really old" is this drive?

2. When I saw the "really old" comment I thought of older IDE HDD units that might not be detected automatically by the IDE controllers and BIOS. Such units had a set of setup parameters printed on the unit - things like the Cylinders, Heads, and Sectors specs, perhaps with added items like a Head Parking track number. When those HDD's were installed, you often had to enter those specs by hand on the BIOS screen which showed the HDD's present and detected. Today's systems, instead, automatically detect HDD units and their requirements, based in part on reading such data from the HDD unit itself. So, does the BIOS Setup screen show you this IDE unit as a valid hardware drive on that screen with other drives? Does it seem to get the correct info in terms of name, size and characteristics? If the BIOS can't figure it out, no OS will be able to use it.

3. IF the BIOS screen gets it wrong AND the HDD has those Cylinder / Head / Sector specs printed on it, you can do two things:
(a) enter those specs yourself on that BIOS screen - to do that, you may have to tell the BIOS that this HDD is a Type 47.
(b) Go to one of the last BIOS pages and look for an option to Automatically Detect a HDD. This menu choice usually does a more thorough examination of the HDD unit, and if successful it MAY detect the right settings, or it MAY offer you a choice of several possible settings. If you get choices, write them down. Now choose one, SAVE and Exit to boot. See if you can READ the HDD that way (Do NOT write to it!) If you cannot, repeat the process of manually Detecting the unit and try a different set of proposed parameters.
 
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The adapter I have does have a Molex connector in it, so the power shouldn't be the issue.
I'd say it's around 10 years old, it was in a Philips DVD writer which was used to record TV shows and it had a bunch of valuable recordings from a recorder which were put onto it.

It currently has no jumper which it says means "Single or Master"
It does show up in my bios as a 150GB WD HDD.

 
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That seems like a quite probable issue, that the drive format isn't compatible with windows. How would I go about this? I installed Partition Wizard but am quite unsure of what to do, I'm quite worried that I might accidently do something that will erase the drive.
 
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That seems like a quite probable issue, that the drive format isn't compatible with windows. How would I go about this? I installed Partition Wizard but am quite unsure of what to do, I'm quite worried that I might accidently do something that will erase the drive.
Click to expand...

Bare in mind that the data will not get erased unless you action any task to the drive, such as initialising, or indeed formatting it. So at this stage, all you have to do is get an enclosure or use one of the docks as suggested, to see if you can gain access to the folders.

We have established that Windows (at least your current version) will not recognise the file format of the drive. So can you tell me what OS the previous DVD writer system used? If you can get the disk attached to the same OS, (via an enclosure or dock) then the file format will be recognised again, and you will be able to transfer the data off it.
 
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When Windows tells you that the drive is uninitialised, it means that it cannot make sense of the data in sector 0. That's where the partition table lives.

I would examine sector 0 with a disc editor (eg DMDE freeware).

http://dmde.com/

Could you show us the contents of sector 0 in hexadecimal mode (select Mode -> Hexadecimal).
 
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