HDD GURU FORUMS

Hi All,

My windows 8 laptop (Fujitsu th700) died after many years of faithful service (After dropping it many times, I think the mainboard had some loose components and now it won't turn on). I now have a Lenovo X230t machine (Windows 7) and I want to recover some of my data from the Fujitsu laptop HDD. The old laptop has a Mushkin Chronox Deluxe 240gb SSD.

I tried to put the old SSD into the lenovo, but it turns out that the lenovo is the slim form factor and my mushkin drive is slightly too thick to go in (that's what she said). So I remembered that I have a 2.5" HDD SATA-USB enclosure which used to be an HP passport external drive. I plugged the Mushkin drive into the enclosure and then into my laptop's usb and windows shows the drive as a CD Rom icon and says "Windows can't access this disc etc..". I opened windows disk manager and I see that It does recognize the disk size (220ish gb), but it doesn't think that there is an active partition on the drive. I tried EASEUS data/partition recovery and it doesn't think that there are any files on the disk (after an 8min scan).

The Mushkin drive had windows 8 installled on it, is this why I cannot see the partition? or is there a possibility that when my old laptop died, the sudden power loss killed the SSD? or is the SATA enclosure not compatible with the SDD.

*** UPDATE *** : I tried another hard drive (Hitachi 160gb sata 5400rpm) with the same HP enclosure and the same problem happens..

So it seems as if the enclosure is faulty? or do I need to download the right drivers for the enclosure? It came from an HP passport drive which I took apart and kept the SATA-USB circuit board ... it has worked before

Any suggestions?

Many thanks,
MushkinMan

Use a generic enclosure.

Your OEM enclosure appears to have been configured with a virtual CDROM (such as WD's SmartWare), plus the bridge firmware will most likely cut the capacity of the drive slightly. The bridge may also encrypt your data.

Thank you, I will go buy one today and let you know if it works

** UPDATE ** I got the Vantec Nexstar 2.5" USB enclosure for $8.99 and it worked !
http://www.ncix.com/products/?sku=42781&promoid=1306

When I plugged it in it asked me to do a scandisk

Thanks for the helpful advice

*** ANOTHER UPDATE ***

The enclosure works well as an external slave drive, but I couldn't seem to use the enclosure as a master boot device.

I tried to boot directly from the windows 8 SSD using the USB2.0 SATA enclosure but it doesn't work. It brings up the windows 8 logo and then gives messages about repairing etc..

When I put the SSD directly into a laptop it works fine.

Maybe Windows 8 doesn't support external usb drive boot (except with Win8 enterprise Windows to go?)
or Maybe the USB2 isn't fast enough (I doubt it though)?

Hmm... anyone else had any luck booting from an SSD in a USB2 enclosure?

Thanks.
MM

The Windows-8 Operating System in the SSD was installed when it was in another laptop. All the hardware information/drives that windows-8 configured/loaded in the drive are of the previous laptopºs. Leaving aside other variables, the mere fact that the boot drive is moved from another computer will bring lots of erros during booting and after wards.

mushkinman wrote:*** ANOTHER UPDATE ***

The enclosure works well as an external slave drive, but I couldn't seem to use the enclosure as a master boot device.

I tried to boot directly from the windows 8 SSD using the USB2.0 SATA enclosure but it doesn't work. It brings up the windows 8 logo and then gives messages about repairing etc..

When I put the SSD directly into a laptop it works fine.

Maybe Windows 8 doesn't support external usb drive boot (except with Win8 enterprise Windows to go?)
or Maybe the USB2 isn't fast enough (I doubt it though)?

Hmm... anyone else had any luck booting from an SSD in a USB2 enclosure?

Thanks.
MM

@Matiw

I know that switching a HDD with an OS to another machine with a different hardware setup will cause a lot of errors (e.g. different drivers etc..) but in my experience it should still boot into the OS. The windows 8 was installed while the HDD was inside a Fujitsu TH700 tablet. I then tried to boot from that HDD in an external enclosure plugged into a Lenovo Thinkpad X230t and it didn't boot into the OS, it just showed a windows 8 logo (blue windows logo) and then told me about some drive errors. I then took the HDD and plugged it into a DELL XPSM1210 (a wonderful machine that just keeps on truckin), not using the enclosure but actually pluggin it directly into the DELL and it booted into Windows 8 just fine.

I did some reading and I see that Windows 8 Enterprise has a feature called Windows to go (or on the go, or something) which allows you to boot Windows 8 from any USB portable storage (key etc..). But I think you need Win8 Enterprise to get it.

Anyway, the original topic was about how the enclosure wasn't working and it seems to be a hardware failure on the USB enclosure. I just assumed that a circuit board with no moving parts was unlikely to fail. I guess I learned something new.

Thanks everyone

MM