Tech Support Forum - View Single Post - Recover Data from Boot Drive using External USB Enclosure

digitalcaptive · 02-17-2008, 05:38 AM

Yesterday my old desktop pc died while I was using it. I think the motherboard fried, because I heard/saw a loud "spark". Anyway, after that I couldn't turn the computer back on. Not that I cared because I'm not interested in repairing it.

I just need some data off of the old pc's boot drive. Simple enough, I thought. Just switch the jumpers on the HDD, make it a slave, and connect it to an external usb and copy the data right?

PROBLEM. The drive will "mount", but when I try to access it as a USB Mass Storage Device, I will get a prompt that the drive needs to be formatted. When I run chkdsk from dos on the HDD, I get the following:

"The Type of the file system is NTFS.
Volume label is System.

and then a whole bunch of "corrupt attribute list entries", etc."

I've been able to connect other hard drives from the computer using the external enclosure, I just can't this one to work.

What's going on here? What can I do to get access to the data?

It's a Samsung drive in NTFS and the OS that I had it on it was Windows XP Home...

The computer that I've attached the drive as a external HDD is running Windows XP Pro (with its C drive using the FAT32).

Thanks,
DC

02-17-2008, 05:38 AM	#1 (permalink)
digitalcaptive Registered User Join Date: Feb 2008 Posts: 1 OS: WinXP Pro	Recover Data from Boot Drive using External USB Enclosure Yesterday my old desktop pc died while I was using it. I think the motherboard fried, because I heard/saw a loud "spark". Anyway, after that I couldn't turn the computer back on. Not that I cared because I'm not interested in repairing it. I just need some data off of the old pc's boot drive. Simple enough, I thought. Just switch the jumpers on the HDD, make it a slave, and connect it to an external usb and copy the data right? PROBLEM. The drive will "mount", but when I try to access it as a USB Mass Storage Device, I will get a prompt that the drive needs to be formatted. When I run chkdsk from dos on the HDD, I get the following: "The Type of the file system is NTFS. Volume label is System. and then a whole bunch of "corrupt attribute list entries", etc." I've been able to connect other hard drives from the computer using the external enclosure, I just can't this one to work. What's going on here? What can I do to get access to the data? It's a Samsung drive in NTFS and the OS that I had it on it was Windows XP Home... The computer that I've attached the drive as a external HDD is running Windows XP Pro (with its C drive using the FAT32). Thanks, DC