External Seegate Freeagent Go 500Gb, internally ST3500820AS failed to initialize in external box.
I opened the box and connected directly to Windows XP PC internal SATA connector.
Windows boots somehow slower but finally doesn't show any disk in disk manager.
Mhdd 32 v4.6 initializes the disk and scans surface for several bad sectors.

While I'm really slow in Linux ...

Why Windows can't see the disk and is there a way to force Windows to initialize it?
What other local options I have to recover data (photos) from such a disk?
As Mhdd has a sector level access, recovering chances seem to be high.

Thanks!

Try R-studio and scan the drive if it works pay for it and recover your data

Thanks for input.

I installed R-Studio demo for Windows but it doesn't display physical disk interfaces. Still - no disk found under Windows.

I wonder, why mhdd scanner sees the disk and Windows can't find it at all.

This is well-known with some types of disk fault, and is one reason why Windows is typically not recommended for doing data recovery from drives with hardware problems.

Great, that's something I expected.
I can recall that some 10 years ago there was a Windows utility, which tried to start IDE disks which else failed.
Isn't there something like that today?

What are the options today?
Is there some CD Bootable recovery utility capable to recognize physical disks and recover Fat32 or NTFS?
(I'm not sure about file system of this Seagate, but according to it's size, likely it's NTFS)

Thanks!

Thanks Vulcanos for the tip, but I still couldn't find any according thread in this forum. Could you please give some more info .... why and how to?
Thanks!

As I have unfortunately experienced with some of your previous posts, your questions are too ambiguous for me to understand. If you want me to understand the questions, you'll need to explain them in more detail.


What exactly do you mean?


I don't understand - "why" and "how to" what exactly?

Please take my apologies of my miserable English syntax.
In search of a solution, I certainly appreciate other poster's time and try to keep my questions short.

I just mean,

where to find info about such disk failure background, that Windows doesn't see the whole physical disk, while mhdd is capable to scan it normally. From your earlier post I read it's well-known but couldn't find any info.

What choices one has to access such disk under Windows for using already familiar recovery applications

What other choices there are, to recover data from disk of behavior described in my original post.

Thanks!

There is no need to apologise - my point is just that writing too few words, will sometimes prevent other people from understanding you.


This type of situation has been seen several times on the forum before.

MHDD is not designed to ignore disks which behave abnormally, so it can (and sometimes does) behave differently to an OS like Windows. The full explanation would require you to understand typical device driver code, and the decisions which device drivers make about detecting ("enumerating") the devices which they control including the use of retry counters, timeouts and other techniques.


Based on your description - under Windows you may have no choices, if Windows (specifically the relevant disk controller device driver) is not reporting the presence of that faulty disk, due to the disk's behaviour failing the detection algorithm in the device driver.

If you are accepting the risks of DIY, and the fact that you might make things worse by your attempts, then you would need to use a different approach.


There are several DIY possibilities, if you are accepting those associated risks, but the list of choices depends on your skills, experience, willingness to pay for software, willingness & ability to use another OS, any limitations which you choose to place on whether you are prepared to clone the disk before doing recovery of files including availability of temporary storage etc. etc. IMHO the summary is that you will need to use a different OS, if your (physical) disk is not recognised at all under Windows.

A full list of all possible choices would be long, and mostly a waste of time since only one or a few would be tried (and such a list would likely incomplete, no matter how long was spent trying to write it). Many options depend on the constraints about OS, cost, available equipment, skill etc. that I mention above. You will find examples of previous answers to similar situations if you search for "clone" or "cloning" in the forum.

A DR company would probably use a dedicated disk cloning device (Atola, DDI, etc.), which is much more efficient, and would have a high chance of success.