Laptop Hard Drive Not Recognized Externally by PC using "SATA to USB" Adaptor.

[Jimmy1981]

This all started when my wife’s laptop (Sony Vaio T Series Notebook) started showing an error (Blue screen) upon startup which said:

"Your PC needs to be repaired"
"A required device isn't connected or can't be accessed"
"Error code 0xc0000185"

"You'll need to use the recovery tools on your installation Media. If you don't have an installation media like a disk or USB device contact your system administrator or PC manufacturer"

I tried to get around this issue by using the restore option but it wouldn't work. I just kept getting the same blue screen error. The laptop doesn't have a disk drive nor was I provided with a USB device with installation media. Not only that, but I'm currently living overseas and don't have access to the manufacturer (Sony) or a reliable tech.

I read somewhere that I needed to format the laptop to fix the error but that before doing so I should first copy the files in the drive to another computer to avoid losing them, so I figured the solution would be to remove the hard drive from the laptop and copy the files to another PC using a SATA to USB cable.

I purchased the SATA to USB adaptor which worked perfectly with an older hard drive I have, but when I connected my wife’s hard drive I got the following message:

"You Need to Format the Disk Before You Can Use It" (or something to that extent) and couldn't access the files so I clicked "Cancel" to avoid losing the files and tried to "Eject” the drive “Safely" but it wouldn't eject. I waited a while and nothing happened so I tried shutting the computer down to see if that helped but the computer got stuck on the "Shutting Down" screen. It wouldn't shut down and after several minutes of waiting I figured the drive was impeding it from doing so, so I unplugged the drive from the USB port and the PC was able to shut down.

Unfortunately now when I plug the hard drive into the USB ports it isn't detected at all. I tried it on different USB ports and on another computer at work but the hard drive isn't detected anywhere. I'm really worried that by not having ejected it properly that I ruined the hard drive and lost the info within it. I can still feel and hear it functioning when I plug it in, it just isn't being detected and I'm not getting the "Format Drive" prompt any longer.

Just to be sure I tried the older hard drive again and it's still working perfectly, so the SATA to USB wire is working fine, and so are the USB ports. The issue seems to be my wife’s hard drive. On one hand it was already asking to be formatted in the first place and on top of that I unplugged it without using the "Eject safely" option since it didn't seem to be working. I hope I could fix the drive somehow but if that’s not possible I’d be happy with just being able to access/copy the files even if I need a new hard drive for the laptop to work again. We had some fond memories in that drive (Pictures and videos of our son) and it would be devastating to lose them.

We highly appreciate any help with this issue and thank you for your time.

 

[LudazTV]

Have you tried plugging the hard drive into a different computer? If one PC doesn't recognize the Hard Drive it may be unlikely that others do but it's worth it to give it a try. I don't know much about data recovery but I'll try my best to help. You can find some free Data Recovery software, such as 'Recuva', and see if you can salvage anything with that. If not, and those files are that important to you, I suggest going to a tech store and see if they can do anything for you. I don't usually suggest going to stores as most things are fixable at home but stores may have tools to recover files that you won't have.

 

[Jimmy1981]

Thanks for your reply LudazTV, and to answer your question yes I did try it on a different computer but it's not being detected there either. I will look into the Recuva option and update the thread with the results once I do.

In the meantime any other suggestions, information and/or DIY solutions would be highly appreciated. I'm really hoping that I could get the drive working properly again before having to resort to data recovery and scrapping the drive. Although I don't know anything about drives or PC troubleshooting myself, I'm guessing and mainly hoping that there's a way to get it working again. If this is incorrect please let me know.

Thanks again.

 

[LudazTV]

Thanks for your reply LudazTV, and to answer your question yes I did try it on a different computer but it's not being detected there either. I will look into the Recuva option and update the thread with the results once I do.

In the meantime any other suggestions, information and/or DIY solutions would be highly appreciated. I'm really hoping that I could get the drive working properly again before having to resort to data recovery and scrapping the drive. Although I don't know anything about drives or PC troubleshooting myself, I'm guessing and mainly hoping that there's a way to get it working again. If this is incorrect please let me know.

Thanks again.

To me it sounds like you may have corrupted some parts of the Hard Drive, I remember doing something similar with a USB drive and finding a tutorial on how to recover it, which did work but I can't remember quite how I did it. I do remember a small detail that was that when the PC didn't recognize the USB being there, there was a way I could see it and view it's properties, it was just hidden.

Here's something you can try:
Open File Explorer > Right click "My PC" and click "Manage" > Find the tab that says "Disk Management" and click it

all hard drives connected should show up here, let me know if by doing this you see the hard drive.

 

[Jimmy1981]

OK so I accessed "Disk Mgt." before plugging the Drive back in and was able to see my PC's "C" and "D" drives along with a "Reserved" drive. I closed "Disk Mgt." and plugged the hard drive in and now when I try accessing "Disk Mgt." it stays stuck on "Loading disk configuration information" and now no drives show up. It's as if the drive froze the Disk Mgt. program.

I'm going to leave the drive connected and see if eventually the Disk Mgt. loads correctly, as it did before plugging the drive in. I'll let you know.

 

[LudazTV]

OK so I accessed "Disk Mgt." before plugging the Drive back in and was able to see my PC's "C" and "D" drives along with a "Reserved" drive. I closed "Disk Mgt." and plugged the hard drive in and now when I try accessing "Disk Mgt." it stays stuck on "Loading disk configuration information" and now no drives show up. It's as if the drive froze the Disk Mgt. program.

I'm going to leave the drive connected and see if eventually the Disk Mgt. loads correctly, as it did before plugging the drive in. I'll let you know.

Alright, seems like that Hard Drive is causing quite a nuisance lol.

I'm going to sleep now, quite late here but I look forward to seeing how it went

 

[Jimmy1981]

lol it sure is. Have a good night.

 

[Jimmy1981]

OK so after about 25 minutes the Disk Mgt. loaded!
Hope this is a good sign..

I can see the PC's 3 main Drives again in Disk Mgt. (The PC's drives are all under "Disk 0") and now the Laptops Hard Drive ( I: ) is showing up to, along with another 5 drives that don't have letters assigned to them but they're all part of the same disk ("Disk 5") which is obviously the hard drive in question.

This is a list of all the drives that are showing up now, that didn't show up when I ran the Disk Mgt. without the Laptops drive plugged in before:

1) OEM Partition
2) Recovery Partition
3) EFI System Partition
4) Recovery Partition
5) Recovery Partition
6) Primary Partition (I: )


The 3 PC Drives all show as NTFS File System.
The Laptop's (I: ) drive shows up with a RAW File System.
The other 5 don't show any File System at all (They're blank).
They all say Healthy.

All of the Laptops drives say they're 100% free though, which is making me think everything's been erased. I hope I'm wrong.

I opened up Windows Explorer out of curiosity and the (I: ) drive is now showing up under "Computer". Seems like we're making some progress. I tried opening it though and it doesn't finish loading fully. I'm just going to leave it as I did with the Disk Mgt. program to see if it eventually opens.

Please let me know how to proceed when you get a chance. Thanks again.

 

[LudazTV]

OK so after about 25 minutes the Disk Mgt. loaded!
Hope this is a good sign..

I can see the PC's 3 main Drives again in Disk Mgt. (The PC's drives are all under "Disk 0") and now the Laptops Hard Drive ( I: ) is showing up to, along with another 5 drives that don't have letters assigned to them but they're all part of the same disk ("Disk 5") which is obviously the hard drive in question.

This is a list of all the drives that are showing up now, that didn't show up when I ran the Disk Mgt. without the Laptops drive plugged in before:

1) OEM Partition
2) Recovery Partition
3) EFI System Partition
4) Recovery Partition
5) Recovery Partition
6) Primary Partition (I: )


The 3 PC Drives all show as NTFS File System.
The Laptop's (I: ) drive shows up with a RAW File System.
The other 5 don't show any File System at all (They're blank).
They all say Healthy.

All of the Laptops drives say they're 100% free though, which is making me think everything's been erased. I hope I'm wrong.

I opened up Windows Explorer out of curiosity and the (I: ) drive is now showing up under "Computer". Seems like we're making some progress. I tried opening it though and it doesn't finish loading fully. I'm just going to leave it as I did with the Disk Mgt. program to see if it eventually opens.

Please let me know how to proceed when you get a chance. Thanks again.

Sounds great, but not so great... I see the Hard Drive is split into 6 partitions which is fine. I'm guessing the Hard Drive is now registered as RAW due to the problem you had before. When this happens it means that a loss of data may have been likely, so recovering the data may be pretty difficult. There's a whole thread on this, which someone had suggested using a program called "TestDisk" that could recover Disk Partitions to their formatted state (FAT32/NTSF). If you didn't have any luck with opening the drive from File Explorer I recommend using TestDisk as a final attempt.

If you have any more information I'd be happy to help further!