I have various drives including Seagate Barracuda and WD drives. These drives are 3.5 inch drives and are SATA type. Most of them have data on them that I would like to recover and copy the data off of them. The problem is this, Windows 7 doesn't recognize the drives. Windows 7 doesn't assign a drive letter so I can't run CHKDSK. In disk management, each drive comes up as Disk 1 or 2 or 3 and unknown and not initialized. I did not initialize or format the drives as I know data will be lost.

The drives do receive power but they don't spin up. I am not sure if hardware failure is the problem but I would like to copy the data off of them, if possible. So, how do I get data off of the drives? Perhaps, I could use Linux to help? Would it help to replace the PC board?

I forgot to add. Most of the drives are coming up with CRC errors. Again, I don't know if I can recover and copy the data off of them or is this a waste of time. As I type this out, I have a Seagate Barracuda 750gb sata drive. Disk Management says Disk 1, Unknown, not initialized and unallocated. In Minitool Partition Wizard, it comes up as Read Only and Bad disk. Test Disk is says Partition: Read Error. I am running Minitool Partition Wizard 9.1 and it is scanning the sectors. I don't think Test Disk is helpful in this situation.

"Don't spin up" AND "CRC errors"??



You'll need more accurate details of the actual symptoms for EACH drive if you have any hope of receiving the right advice here

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2jkbmjp, it sounds to me like the drives may have Power Up In Standby (PUIS) enabled. If so, then you can disable PUIS with HDAT2.

You would need to launch HDAT2 with the /w switch to wake up the drives ...

HDAT2 /w

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Thanks for the replies. I am not sure how to explain this any further than what I have done so already. After I put each drive into the docking station and I turn on the dock, the drives receive power. Windows 7 does not assign a drive letter. Under Disk management, the drives do show up as Disk 1 or 2 and Unknown and Not Initialized. Again, Test Disk cannot be used because if there is no drive letter then it is no help.

For example, take the Seagate Barracuda 750gb drive. Using Minitool Partition Wizard, the drive shows up as READ ONLY and BAD DISK. I am guessing the drive is bad or has some type of internal failure.

I am not sure what Power Up In Standby (PUIS) is or how to disable it. I will try HDPARM to see if it works.

Would Linux be useful in this case to recover data? I am not a typical Linux user but I don't think Linux is picky about drives as Windows is.

I installed HDPARM for Windows. I disabled power management, I think, and Windows 7 assigns a drive letter. However, it asks to format the drive. Also, it says "E:\ is not accessible. Data error (CRC)". Where do I go from here? What can I do next?

Where I am at right now, the drive is in the dock. The drive has power and the status light on the dock is blinking. The computer assigned it a drive letter. Disk management says Disk 1, BASIC, READ ONLY, Healthy (primary partition), 698 RAW. What can I do next?

@jkbmjp, you did not mention that you were using a docking station in your first post. Windows is most likely detecting the bridge PCB in the dock rather than HDD behind the bridge.

How do the drives behave if you connect them via SATA?

Can you upload photos of the component sides of each HDD PCB?

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

And, in which kind of computer and OS were the disks used before ?