Pulled HDD out of Latitude D600 Enclosure not seeing it

seantobin5 · 03-20-2009, 07:24 PM

Hello, I pulled a hard drive out of a Dell Latitude D600 and put it into a drive enclosure. I plugged it into my desktop and it will not reconize it but it does install drivers for it though. It took maybe about 15 min to install the drivers? It's not very normal but... yeah. Anyways, the computer had Windows Vista on it and it worked right before I pulled it out and if I put it into the computer, it works. Just not in the enclosure. Thanks for your help :)

**raptor_pa** · 03-20-2009, 07:40 PM

Ummm are you trying to boot to it? or does the PC you connected to have it's own OS. If it does and it is XP it won't recognize a Vista formatted drive to to the GUID partition table used by Vista - XP doesn't know about it.

seantobin5 · 03-20-2009, 07:46 PM

Actually, I'm just trying to format it. And yes, I'm running Windows Vista Ultimate x64 and the hard drive has Windows Vista Home premium. I also tried it in Mac OS X and it didnt see it along with UBUNTU 8.10...It runs and vibrates. Maybe it's the firmware?

**raptor_pa** · 03-20-2009, 08:06 PM

Is the enclosure known good? Is it an IDE drive or SATA? Any noise or clicking? Kind of tough to trouble shoot in an enclosure - MHDD and some other tools don't run against drives connected via USB. What is the make and model of the drive?

seantobin5 · 03-20-2009, 10:50 PM

Well, It works with a 20 GB HDD I pulled out of an iBook So Thats good... And there is no clicking noise... The drive is a Seagate Momentus 40GB 5,400 RPM. http://www.hardwarezone.com/articles...=10&id=878&pg= that's the hard drive.

**raptor_pa** · 03-20-2009, 11:00 PM

Momentus have a fairly high faiure rate in the firmware/SA areas... Try connecting it directly to a PC if possible ( meay need an adapter if 2.5 inch IDE) Easiest way to tell is see how BIOS identifies it. From what you are saying tho it sounds like a firmware failure.

seantobin5 · 03-21-2009, 04:22 PM

Oh ok... Well, I am getting the charger for the laptop tomorrow, so I'll plug the HDD into the computer and see if it sees it then when I install Windows XP on it. Will it have a problem seeing the hard drive if the hard drive has Vista on it? And is there any way to update the firmware if I do get it working?

**raptor_pa** · 03-21-2009, 04:54 PM

Not anyway to do it at home, and it would be cheaper to replace the drive than have a recovery shop locate and load compatible firmware. The only way that makes sense is if the data on the drive has enough value to justify the cost of recovery. SO this is a Vista formatted drive you are trying to access in XP? Supposedly it should work, Vista should have the MBR informatyion available as well as it's GUID P-Table info, but I have seen quite a few issues with it. Before installing XP over a Vista install, zero wipe the drive with killdisk or dban, then repartition and reformat during the XP install

ggillery · 03-21-2009, 09:20 PM

hey i have the same problem as you, except with a wiebetech with Hitachi Deskstar IDE 250GB USB/Firewire drive. I am using the USB Port and neither my Dell D610 nor my work HP 6910p recognize the drive in disk management, but i can see it in both the remove hardware tray and device manager, just like you can. Check this out, my girlfriend was like why dont you try in Mac. i plug in her mac, and I see the drive's content! only problem is that i have a Seagate Freeagent Go 500GB that i wanna transfer to and it is NTFS formatted. Mac can read NTFS (as the wiebetech is NTFS), but it cant write to it (unless i install a free utility, which is the obvious way to solve my problem, and maybe yours). However, i am ambitious and determined and stubborn to have the drive be read by my pc's. i bought a new external usb enclosure, that didnt work. i then bought apricorn's Drivewire USB/IDE/SATA cables and so far that hasnt worked. Something has to give though. If the mac see's everything on the drive, why cant a pc? should i try firewire port, as my hp laptop has a firewire port, but i never used one before. any advice is greatly appreciated.

**raptor_pa** · 03-21-2009, 09:37 PM

Try partition find and mount first and see if it can see thedrive - sounds in your case gilley like it is more a partition table issue...

ggillery · 03-21-2009, 11:32 PM

thank you sir, i believe you might be correct, thanks for the partition find software recommendation. so i mounted cleanly to the mac, was offloading files onto it and decided midway through to install macfuse and ntfs-3g which allows the mac to write to ntfs drives. so i eject the faulty drive, install software, reboot and plug back in the wiebtech drive and an error screen for ntfs-3g pops up saying that the last time the disk was removed it didnt have a clean unmount and cant mount it (this is when the mac os is in ntfs writable mode now). it recommended removing from mac pluggin back into pc so i can safely eject it. obviously that wont work, so i am going to check out partition find and see how that goes. could this help the original poster as well? i feel like we have similar issues. thanks for the help so far guys!

**raptor_pa** · 03-21-2009, 11:46 PM

Kewl let us know how it works out. Not sure on the OPs- the fact that you were able to mount yours on a MAC was what led to the P-table diagnosis

ggillery · 03-22-2009, 10:39 AM

thanks raptor. the partition find and mount didnt find the partition. i think its corrupted pretty bad. the mac is reading it though. when i run mac disk utility to repair or run first aid, it says it has a partition but has the drive is non-stable. go figure. the good part is that i can at least pull my data off onto my new hdd.

ggillery · 03-22-2009, 10:40 AM

and thanks again for the insights. they are well appreciated.

seantobin5 · 03-22-2009, 07:22 PM

Ok... well, i put the hard drive back in... got the charger, computer turns on perfectly, hard drive is spinning... but it asks me for a BIOS password. I do not know it so is there an administrator password you would know of? Thanks :)

seantobin5 · 03-29-2009, 01:28 AM

Well, it turned out that there was a password set to access the HDD... So I called Dell up and they gave me the BOIS password and the HDD password... thanks for all your help :) My laptop is running great now! :D

03-20-2009, 07:24 PM	#1 (permalink)
seantobin5 Registered User Join Date: Jun 2008 Posts: 94 OS: Windows 7 Ultimate x64, Windows XP Home Edition SP3, Ubuntu Linux 9.04	Pulled HDD out of Latitude D600 Enclosure not seeing it Hello, I pulled a hard drive out of a Dell Latitude D600 and put it into a drive enclosure. I plugged it into my desktop and it will not reconize it but it does install drivers for it though. It took maybe about 15 min to install the drivers? It's not very normal but... yeah. Anyways, the computer had Windows Vista on it and it worked right before I pulled it out and if I put it into the computer, it works. Just not in the enclosure. Thanks for your help :) __________________ ~Sean T.

03-20-2009, 07:40 PM	#2 (permalink)
raptor_pa Mod Hardware Team Join Date: Dec 2008 Location: Central PA Posts: 4,786 OS: XP	Re: Pulled HDD out of Latitude D600 Enclosure not seeing it Ummm are you trying to boot to it? or does the PC you connected to have it's own OS. If it does and it is XP it won't recognize a Vista formatted drive to to the GUID partition table used by Vista - XP doesn't know about it. __________________

03-20-2009, 07:46 PM	#3 (permalink)
seantobin5 Registered User Join Date: Jun 2008 Posts: 94 OS: Windows 7 Ultimate x64, Windows XP Home Edition SP3, Ubuntu Linux 9.04	Re: Pulled HDD out of Latitude D600 Enclosure not seeing it Actually, I'm just trying to format it. And yes, I'm running Windows Vista Ultimate x64 and the hard drive has Windows Vista Home premium. I also tried it in Mac OS X and it didnt see it along with UBUNTU 8.10...It runs and vibrates. Maybe it's the firmware? __________________ ~Sean T.

03-20-2009, 08:06 PM	#4 (permalink)
raptor_pa Mod Hardware Team Join Date: Dec 2008 Location: Central PA Posts: 4,786 OS: XP	Re: Pulled HDD out of Latitude D600 Enclosure not seeing it Is the enclosure known good? Is it an IDE drive or SATA? Any noise or clicking? Kind of tough to trouble shoot in an enclosure - MHDD and some other tools don't run against drives connected via USB. What is the make and model of the drive? __________________

03-20-2009, 10:50 PM	#5 (permalink)
seantobin5 Registered User Join Date: Jun 2008 Posts: 94 OS: Windows 7 Ultimate x64, Windows XP Home Edition SP3, Ubuntu Linux 9.04	Re: Pulled HDD out of Latitude D600 Enclosure not seeing it Well, It works with a 20 GB HDD I pulled out of an iBook So Thats good... And there is no clicking noise... The drive is a Seagate Momentus 40GB 5,400 RPM. http://www.hardwarezone.com/articles...=10&id=878&pg= that's the hard drive. __________________ ~Sean T.

03-20-2009, 11:00 PM	#6 (permalink)
raptor_pa Mod Hardware Team Join Date: Dec 2008 Location: Central PA Posts: 4,786 OS: XP	Re: Pulled HDD out of Latitude D600 Enclosure not seeing it Momentus have a fairly high faiure rate in the firmware/SA areas... Try connecting it directly to a PC if possible ( meay need an adapter if 2.5 inch IDE) Easiest way to tell is see how BIOS identifies it. From what you are saying tho it sounds like a firmware failure. __________________

03-21-2009, 04:22 PM	#7 (permalink)
seantobin5 Registered User Join Date: Jun 2008 Posts: 94 OS: Windows 7 Ultimate x64, Windows XP Home Edition SP3, Ubuntu Linux 9.04	Re: Pulled HDD out of Latitude D600 Enclosure not seeing it Oh ok... Well, I am getting the charger for the laptop tomorrow, so I'll plug the HDD into the computer and see if it sees it then when I install Windows XP on it. Will it have a problem seeing the hard drive if the hard drive has Vista on it? And is there any way to update the firmware if I do get it working? __________________ ~Sean T.

03-21-2009, 04:54 PM	#8 (permalink)
raptor_pa Mod Hardware Team Join Date: Dec 2008 Location: Central PA Posts: 4,786 OS: XP	Re: Pulled HDD out of Latitude D600 Enclosure not seeing it Not anyway to do it at home, and it would be cheaper to replace the drive than have a recovery shop locate and load compatible firmware. The only way that makes sense is if the data on the drive has enough value to justify the cost of recovery. SO this is a Vista formatted drive you are trying to access in XP? Supposedly it should work, Vista should have the MBR informatyion available as well as it's GUID P-Table info, but I have seen quite a few issues with it. Before installing XP over a Vista install, zero wipe the drive with killdisk or dban, then repartition and reformat during the XP install __________________

03-21-2009, 09:20 PM	#9 (permalink)
ggillery Registered User Join Date: Mar 2009 Posts: 4 OS: WinXP	Re: Pulled HDD out of Latitude D600 Enclosure not seeing it hey i have the same problem as you, except with a wiebetech with Hitachi Deskstar IDE 250GB USB/Firewire drive. I am using the USB Port and neither my Dell D610 nor my work HP 6910p recognize the drive in disk management, but i can see it in both the remove hardware tray and device manager, just like you can. Check this out, my girlfriend was like why dont you try in Mac. i plug in her mac, and I see the drive's content! only problem is that i have a Seagate Freeagent Go 500GB that i wanna transfer to and it is NTFS formatted. Mac can read NTFS (as the wiebetech is NTFS), but it cant write to it (unless i install a free utility, which is the obvious way to solve my problem, and maybe yours). However, i am ambitious and determined and stubborn to have the drive be read by my pc's. i bought a new external usb enclosure, that didnt work. i then bought apricorn's Drivewire USB/IDE/SATA cables and so far that hasnt worked. Something has to give though. If the mac see's everything on the drive, why cant a pc? should i try firewire port, as my hp laptop has a firewire port, but i never used one before. any advice is greatly appreciated.

03-21-2009, 09:37 PM	#10 (permalink)
raptor_pa Mod Hardware Team Join Date: Dec 2008 Location: Central PA Posts: 4,786 OS: XP	Re: Pulled HDD out of Latitude D600 Enclosure not seeing it Try partition find and mount first and see if it can see thedrive - sounds in your case gilley like it is more a partition table issue... __________________

03-21-2009, 11:32 PM	#11 (permalink)
ggillery Registered User Join Date: Mar 2009 Posts: 4 OS: WinXP	Re: Pulled HDD out of Latitude D600 Enclosure not seeing it thank you sir, i believe you might be correct, thanks for the partition find software recommendation. so i mounted cleanly to the mac, was offloading files onto it and decided midway through to install macfuse and ntfs-3g which allows the mac to write to ntfs drives. so i eject the faulty drive, install software, reboot and plug back in the wiebtech drive and an error screen for ntfs-3g pops up saying that the last time the disk was removed it didnt have a clean unmount and cant mount it (this is when the mac os is in ntfs writable mode now). it recommended removing from mac pluggin back into pc so i can safely eject it. obviously that wont work, so i am going to check out partition find and see how that goes. could this help the original poster as well? i feel like we have similar issues. thanks for the help so far guys!

03-21-2009, 11:46 PM	#12 (permalink)
raptor_pa Mod Hardware Team Join Date: Dec 2008 Location: Central PA Posts: 4,786 OS: XP	Re: Pulled HDD out of Latitude D600 Enclosure not seeing it Kewl let us know how it works out. Not sure on the OPs- the fact that you were able to mount yours on a MAC was what led to the P-table diagnosis __________________

03-22-2009, 10:39 AM	#13 (permalink)
ggillery Registered User Join Date: Mar 2009 Posts: 4 OS: WinXP	Re: Pulled HDD out of Latitude D600 Enclosure not seeing it thanks raptor. the partition find and mount didnt find the partition. i think its corrupted pretty bad. the mac is reading it though. when i run mac disk utility to repair or run first aid, it says it has a partition but has the drive is non-stable. go figure. the good part is that i can at least pull my data off onto my new hdd.

03-22-2009, 10:40 AM	#14 (permalink)
ggillery Registered User Join Date: Mar 2009 Posts: 4 OS: WinXP	Re: Pulled HDD out of Latitude D600 Enclosure not seeing it and thanks again for the insights. they are well appreciated.

03-22-2009, 07:22 PM	#15 (permalink)
seantobin5 Registered User Join Date: Jun 2008 Posts: 94 OS: Windows 7 Ultimate x64, Windows XP Home Edition SP3, Ubuntu Linux 9.04	Re: Pulled HDD out of Latitude D600 Enclosure not seeing it Ok... well, i put the hard drive back in... got the charger, computer turns on perfectly, hard drive is spinning... but it asks me for a BIOS password. I do not know it so is there an administrator password you would know of? Thanks :) __________________ ~Sean T.

03-29-2009, 01:28 AM	#16 (permalink)
seantobin5 Registered User Join Date: Jun 2008 Posts: 94 OS: Windows 7 Ultimate x64, Windows XP Home Edition SP3, Ubuntu Linux 9.04	Re: Pulled HDD out of Latitude D600 Enclosure not seeing it Well, it turned out that there was a password set to access the HDD... So I called Dell up and they gave me the BOIS password and the HDD password... thanks for all your help :) My laptop is running great now! :D __________________ ~Sean T.