HDD not showing on BIOS.

[LoboX]

I have a quick question regarding HDD that when you try to clone it or image it using a mobo and software toolz the HDD just doesn't show on your BIOS.

1)Usually when this happens is related to a Firmware, Heads, Platters, SA Problem, PBC issue?
2)If the HDD is not visible on the mobo does a system hardware tool like:Atola, PC-3000, Deepspar can still image or clone the entire HDD, unless you have a physical problem and then use a software tool to extract the data.

I'm saying this cause most of the drive i have encounter don't show on the BIOS but when i listen to the HDD itself it spins good.

Any information would be appreciated.

Thanks

[poehere]

In the Atola, PC3000 DE, Deepspar a lot of times when a HDD is not shown in the bios can be read by one of these tools. The tools work differently than the MB BIOS which can not see the HDD the tools can start the drive and ID the drive. That is only if there is no major issues in the drive SA or other problems on this one. The cloning tools read the SA and initialze the HDD to ID the drive and give access to the data area. You can test the HDD on the Atola and see what it says, DDI can test the drive too to see if it can read. The UDMA PC3K DE needs the complete tool to work it is not a stand alone imaging tool it arrives as a complete package. But if there are other issues on the drive that needs repair then you need to fix this first before you can have access to your data area.

What I am trying to say is that at times yes it is possible to see a drive with one of these tools where the BIOS can not see it at all. Not all times does this one work. But there are cases where it does and then using this tool can be cloned and data gotten from the HDD.

Inside the Atola, DE and DDI there is a file recovery. You can see the files to be recovered before you clone. In all cases like this it is advised to clone a HDD before using the file recovery options on the tools. This at times has worked but if you have issues in heads or what ever and you try to just recover files the drive can fail. Always to be safe make a clone of the HDD and then you can put the clone back on one of the tools and recover files or like you say use a software DR program to recover files. You have to decide which one is better for you. On software programs it has to scan the entire drive which takes time. On the tools if you have the clone you mount it again and then find your file tree. From there on the clone you can pull off the data and write to another HDD. Saves a little time on this one. In some cases it is not possible and a software has to be used to repair something on the drive like a partition table or other problems that will not show you the file structure and the tools can not read the partition of the drive.

[LoboX]

Thanks a lot for that information man really appreciated i understand a lot more about the hardware tools thanks.