HDD - unknown, not initialized

[awong048]

Hi there,

So I had a desktop with a single HDD running windows XP, the desktop overheated and automatically shutoff. The next time I powered on the PC, nothing happened - no BIOS, no beeps, nothing! The PC was pretty old so I just figured it had run it's course and I was thinking about getting a laptop anyway.

So I got a new Windows 7 laptop, and after a few days of setting it up I yanked out the hdd from the old XP desktop and plugged it into the laptop's USB port via some SATA to USB cables.

Win7 recognized new hardware and and seemed to install the drive correctly as "USB Storage", but nothing ever appeared in the Windows Explorer. I opened up the device manager and under 'Disk Drives' I saw a 'USB Drive' item. The properties on that item seemed to indicate all the drivers and such were properly installed and the 'device was working properly'. Under the 'Disk Management' section, the disk showed up - but it said it was 'unknown' and 'not initialized', so no partitions showed up (it also prompted me to 'initialize' it, which I DID NOT do).

At this point I've tried several recovery programs, but the biggest issue is that none of the programs actually see the drive, so I can't run the recovery at all. I even tried Hiren's Boot CD, but again, nothing sees the drive - although, I think that I didn't properly install the USB drivers, so I may try that again. In any case, I was hoping somebody might have some new suggestions for me on how to get any of the programs to 'see' the drive so I can at least try to recover some stuff off of it.

Lastly, in a moment of insanity, I tried to 'initialize' the drive using 'Disk Management'...fortunately (or unfortunately), it failed saying something like function could not complete.

(btw...i've plugged this drive into another Win7 machine, as well as a different WinXP machine only to get the same results as above)

Any help would be GREATLY appreciated - thanks in advance!

adrian

[poehere]

You can try MHDD and see if it can see your HDD. Set this up and boot up from MHDD then report your findings here.

[msurgeon]

Do you hear the drive spin up? If not, then electronics damage may have occurred. If you hear slight clicking noise- but no spin- this indicates heads stuck to platters, a not uncommon situation in the case of sudden power failures. Either case will still require professional intervention since PCBs are not swappable even among same model drives these days and unsticking heads is a delicate procedure. However, recovery likelihood is high and charge should not be too high. If drive is spinning up but still not recognized by bios then the damage goes deeper and will certainly require professional intervention if data is desired.

[awong048]

You can try MHDD and see if it can see your HDD. Set this up and boot up from MHDD then report your findings here.

I tried MHDD (bootup iso), and got the same issue when I used Hiren's Boot CD. My laptop kept getting stuck initializing the host controller. It would say 'Initializing Host Controller 4/6' and just sit there - I gave it a good 10 minutes, but nothing further happened.

[awong048]

Do you hear the drive spin up? If not, then electronics damage may have occurred. If you hear slight clicking noise- but no spin- this indicates heads stuck to platters, a not uncommon situation in the case of sudden power failures. Either case will still require professional intervention since PCBs are not swappable even among same model drives these days and unsticking heads is a delicate procedure. However, recovery likelihood is high and charge should not be too high. If drive is spinning up but still not recognized by bios then the damage goes deeper and will certainly require professional intervention if data is desired.

I'm pretty sure I hear the drive spinning up, maybe not any real 'clicking' noises - maybe a few quiet clicks initially on first power up.

How much is your 'not be too high'??