External hard drive recovery

[Sguzik]

Ok so I am new to this forum and some what new to playing around with Hard drives, i have a lacie external hard drive that worked fine until a accidental shove of the case snapped off the 3.0 usb port, the hard drive worked fine before this and i have it plugged in with a usb adapter and it boots up and sounds perfectly normal but when I go to access it as a local disk in my computer it asks to format the disk and so far i have clicked cancel as I need the data off of it, also this has only ever been plugged into the same computer( OS Vista 32 bit). i am not computer stupid, nor am i a professional who builds computers all the time. i just do not play with hard drives often at all for these reasons. its almost a TB of data needed to recover so i opted no to pay someone to recover it and rather spend money on parts or software and learn how to fix it...... my apologies if this has been covered in a similar dilemma but i have searched and not come up with something that parallels this.

I should be able to answer quickly any questions to help solve my problem.

Thank you for the help in advanced.

Scott

[Vulcan]

I can think of at least 2 reasons why Windows would want to format the disk, when it's directly attached to the PC - for example:

a) if the drive has been damaged internally by the "shove" and is not initialising fully (not a DIY fix); or
b) if the USB-SATA board inside the Lacie case also does encryption (as some external WD enclosures do).

i opted no to pay someone to recover it and rather spend money on parts or software and learn how to fix it

Depending on the actual problem(s) (a good diagnosis is needed to determine this/them), you may be unable to successfully recover this yourself, even with parts and/or software - and there are always risks in trying DIY. You might change a potenially recoverable situation (by a DR company), into one which is totally unrecoverable, or at least much more difficult/expensive. Of course it's your choice if you want to take those risks, since it's your data. You may want to reconsider using a DR company's services, if the data is important/valuable.

You might also find this thread helpful:
diy-what-the-big-deal-t12671.html

I'm not familiar with the USB3 Lacie enclosures, but if I was going to investigate this, here are some of the questions I would be asking, if you're accepting the risks of doing some DIY investigation. Also you need to take sensible ESD (anti-static) precautions (and, of course, be physically gentle with the drive itself) so that you don't cause additional problems.

1) When the drive is directly attached via SATA, what make, model & capacity is shown for that drive in the BIOS setup screen?

2) What is the make, model & capacity shown on the disk drive label itself?

3) Can you supply a close-up photo (or, as suggested by another member, a scan) of the USB-SATA adapter board, so we can see if an encryption chip is obvious. We can then also see what damage has been done to the USB connector / that part of the PCB.

4) During the "shove" which broke the USB connector, did the drive topple/fall? Was it powered-on & spinning at the time?

Other troubleshooting techniques are possible (e.g. doing a read-scan of the drive outside of Windows) but, as I said, they could have potential risks, especially if the disk has been internally damaged.

[Sguzik]

the shove happen as my dvd case pushed the external hard drive case towards the wall it wasnt even a hard push just enough to force the usb cable against the wall itself and bent to the side and from there the usb port was loose an finally after pushing the usb connection a little bit (jiggle) to gain a connection it just pushed in......

Attachments

[alchemy]

newbie here but I didn't see where you tried to install it internally. My USB adpater doesn't work most of the time for some reason.

[Vulcan]

@Sguzik:

Thanks for that reply. Comparing that to my earlier questions, I've interpreted your comments as:

1) Not answered. Are you going to try this?

You mentioned trying a USB adapter, but not all USB adapters work correctly with large capacity disks - hence why I was asking specifically if you have the BIOS detection result from direct SATA connection (if you have taken, or are prepared to take, the risk of spinning-up the drive again).

2) Seagate ST2000DL001 2TB capacity - unfortunately this doesn't help, without the answer to question (1), which is what this answer would be compared with.

3) The photo isn't as close as I had hoped (though thanks for trying). The USB-SATA chip seems to be the ASM1051:

http://www.asmedia.com.tw/eng/e_show_pr ... hp?item=90

No mention of that chip having encryption on that web page - altough that isn't proof either way. I couldn't easily see the detail of the PCB, but it seems quite a clean detaching of the USB connector. A good electronics repairer would probably not have a problem reattaching that, unless there has been PCB damage which I can't see (which would not necessarily maker repair impossible, especially if only temporary, just perhaps more difficult).

4) I think you're saying the drive didn't topple/fall, but have not answered whether it was spinning at the time.

Based on the above, I'm hoping that the only damage it to the USB-SATA board, and that this ASM1051 chip does not do encryption. If that's correct, then direct SATA attachment should work, or a USB-SATA adapter which is definitely compatible with a 2TB disk. Either of those (preferably the direct SATA attachment) would be my next step in diagnosis, if I was in your position, and if I had decided to take the risks of DIY.

(Be especially careful if you get a new USB adapter - some of them make it possible to connect the power wrongly to the drive. As with any new piece of equipment, don't try a new adapter on your critical drive, until you're sure that it works correctly and is not damaging any drives it is connected to - try it with a different drive first, i.e. one that you're prepared to damage.)

[Sguzik]

Sorry, the drive was Off at the time it was moved. When I plug. Via USB adapter it spins and winds up just like it did before, I am hesitant to direct hook up via sata, if anything tomorrow I will take a look at doing. Thanks for the response if a better picture is needed I can do so also. But yes I have hooked if up via USB and it spins. And I am grounded when handling the drive.

[jono-ats]

This is speculation:

Assuming that USB/SATA chip does not encrypt the data, some of these interface designs may change the location of the boot sector, partition map, etc. So you may need to:

1. Fix the PCB;
2. Use an IDENTICAL PCB from another LaCie drive;
3. Run a data recovery program that will search for the boot sector & etc.

Jono