Question LaCie External Hard Drive Data Extraction

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Feb 17, 2016
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Trying to extract data from a LaCie External Hard Drive that the USB ports broke on. I have taken the drive apart and connected it to my PC via SATA. Now I'm just struggling to remove the data. I'm worried about formatting the drive on Windows as I'm afraid it will erase the data. I have tried a couple different data recovery tools, but they either don't recognize the drives or fail when trying to recover files on them. Any ideas are welcome. Thanks!
 
Formatting WILL erase the data, that's what formatting IS, for all intents and purposes, although technically the data is still there until it's been overwritten. Don't do that if you want to extract the data.

Does Windows recognize the drive at all in Windows file explorer and you get an error message when you click on that drive, or does it not recognize the drive AT ALL?

Does the drive show up in the BIOS at all?

If you get an error message when trying to connect to the drive, what does the message say?
 
I'm wondering whether the Lacie enclosure was configured with a 4KB sector size, in which case the file system would be inaccessible in a 512e environment. DMDE can still see the data in such cases, but other tools may not.

Some enclosures also encrypt the data, but I don't think Lacie does this. ICBW, though.
 
Aug 28, 2019
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Trying to extract data from a LaCie External Hard Drive that the USB ports broke on. I have taken the drive apart and connected it to my PC via SATA. Now I'm just struggling to remove the data. I'm worried about formatting the drive on Windows as I'm afraid it will erase the data. I have tried a couple different data recovery tools, but they either don't recognize the drives or fail when trying to recover files on them. Any ideas are welcome. Thanks!

Make sure the hardrive is connected to sata 2
Download Hiren’s BootCD 10.6
Make sure you boot it into usb
Download Rufus 3.6
Boot Hiren’s Boot CD From USB by Using RUFUS

After you load it in your startup settings on your bios
Run Mini Windows Xp: Portable Windows Xp that runs from CD/USB/Ram Drive, with Network and SATA support (Windows Commercial).