Fatal Device Hardware Error

[sdot]

Hey Guys,

I've been working on a project for a few weeks now where I have been recovering music files from old hard drives that I still have kicking around. I bout R Studio to recover the files (many of the hard drives had been reformatted a few times to solve what I think were virus issues). In any event I had written the recovered files to my 2 TB Seagate USB external hard drive. Since I had recovered all of the files, I was sifting through them, naming them and determining which files were complete and which were corrupt when all of the sudden the explorer window started getting laggy. Then an error message regarding a "Fatal Device Hardware Error" popped up. I admittedly wish I had read the message more closely however I figured maybe it was just something to do with the explorer window trying to open a corrupt file or something and I just clicked ok. I called it a night and shut the computer down (a windows update was performed while the computer shut down and I should mention I'm running windows . The next morning I figured I would get back at it for a little while longer but my external hard drive wasn't assigned a drive letter and I couldn't access it through explorer. I looked at the device manager and disk manager and the drive is there as portable device however it says the drive is not initialized and that the space is unallocated. Now if this was only my music on there and I had to start over, albeit that would really suck however, my main reason for purchasing this external hard drive in the first place was as a safe space to save my important pictures, files etc. instead of carrying them around on the laptops internal hard drive (last year I had a laptop completely pack up on me with all of my files never to be seen again). If you guys can help me recover this data somehow I would be tremendously grateful.

Thanks!

[data-medics]

Is the drive showing it's correct capacity?

[sdot]

It does indeed still show the correct capacity.

[sdot]

Ok let me back up a bit here...

After looking underneath the drive to determine the model I noticed that it is only a 1TB drive and as such the disk manager was not indicating the correct capacity as it WAS showing 2TB.

I say it WAS showing 2TB because I just plugged the drive in again after "ejecting the device and safely removing" it, the drive is now not even showing up in the disk manager. I don't know maybe whether I didn't give it long enough to get recognized because I had to go out for a bit but as of when I left my computer it was not being recognized in the disk manager now either. The drive is a Seagate STAX1000102 Expansion Portable 2.5" Hard Drive - 1TB.

[sdot]

I also meant to say that the light is coming on as normal and that the drive is not making any funny noises.

[sdot]

2 questions:

1) what is mhdd?

2) Not questioning you guys on this but, is opening it up the best idea before trying any corrective action that may not require opening the enclosure. I think I'm just worried some irreparable damage could be done if opening the enclosure. Is it just like removing a hdd from a laptop/pc?

[sdot]

Ok thanks guys. I appreciate your help so far.

Couple more questions...

1) How do I connect the hard drive directly to a sata port on my laptop?

2) I currently have one of those adapter kits that connect various different hdd to the USB port on my laptop. Will one of those do the trick?

[HaQue]

- You can't do basic diagnostic without connecting the drive to the SATA port directly; mhdd and other tools will not correctly worrk under USB and even if the drive/enclosure are ok you don't want to scan the drive/clone it by USB.
You get better chance for recovery using SATA/PATA rather then USB.

no you want to find a computer to do it. either a friend, or even build one for the task. A cheap second hand core2 duo will be fine, and probably almost given to you or dirt cheap.

[sdot]

I'll have to see what I can do. I have a few really old desktop computers around but I don't know if they even have an os on them or whether or not they work.

Does the fact that the hard drive is not even detected by r studio or disk management etc mean that im screwed?

I also found it interesting however that my Norton anti virus still somehow must be scanning files on that hard drive when I plug it in because it says it has detected threats in 3 .rar files. Interestingly enough, when I click on the file to find out what the file path is it says unknown file path or something.

I also don't feel it vibrating/spinning anymore. I'm not feeling very optimistic I must say. If I am unable to locate a pc to plug the drive into are there any other options available to me?

[fzabkar]

What does HD Sentinel tell you about the drive? What model number does it report? Does it report a capacity of 2TB or 2TiB?

Other tools will report info about the USB-SATA bridge board inside the enclosure whereas HD Sentinel attempts to communicate with the HDD behind the bridge.

[sdot]

Hey Guys,

Sorry for the massive delay. I had some stuff come up and had to put this project on the back burner. I'm back at it now however, and I have removed the hard drive from the enclosure. I connected the hard drive to my laptop via some external sata to usb cables and my computer still cannot detect the drive nor can R-Studio.

What do you guys suggest at the next steps here?

-S. Bailey

[HaQue]

see 1st previous post, 3rd previous post and 5th previous post.

3 people telling you not to connect via USB, and associated problems if you do... yet you connect via USB? I think the next step is obvious!

[jermy]

i don't get it, you were told to connect it directly to sata and not with USB

[sdot]

Alright I will start looking for a computer to do this with.

Just out of curiosity, why can't you use sata cables connected to a laptop via usb adapter vs sata cables inside a desktop computer?

Thanks guys.

[sdot]

Hi Guys,

Sorry to bump this thread but i am just trying to learn so i was wondering if some one could explain to me the difference between hooking the HDD up to the sata cables in a desktop vs using a usb adapter?

Thanks again.