[Eric Post]

I bought a new computer and wanted to transfer data. I bought an eclosure for a transfer from IDE to USB. I wanted to to transfer the data off my old hard drive to the new one.

I hooked up the computer hard drive on the old computer, it shows a green light which according to the manufacturer means it is working.

Then I plug the enclosure into my usb port on my new computer which is Windows Vista SP1.

Now when I usually plug something into the USB port I get the automatic screen that asks me what I want to do.

That doesn't happen. However I do get the icon for safely remove hardware and the USB device appears there as a USB storage device, but is has no drive letter.

I went to control panel and looked in device manager and it is listed there and says it's working correctly.

I can plug flash drive in another USB port and windows immediately assigns it "Drive J." Then when I unplug it "Drive J" goes away.

So Windows and the flash ports are working. I also see in IE Explorer that drives G, H, I and J are available but empty. If I click on one it tells me to insert a device into the drive.

So any idea why the device shows up as a USB device but no letter?

I've tired rebooting, and followed the directions exactly on the package. Which were connect IDE to enclosure, then connect power source, then connect to USB port of computer.

Thanks

 

[Deleted090308]

Welcome to TSF. :wave:

Look in Disk management (Right click "My computer" > choose "Manage" > Disk Management).

If you can see the drive there - try this: http://www.techsupportforum.com/1163140-post1.html

 

[Eric Post]

When I go to Manager -> disc management


I have my disk 0 which is my computer

then disk 1, 2, 3, 4 all which say removable media and are assigned drive F, G, H, I

and then I have disk 5 which says unknown (not initalized and I can't initalize the disk, which is probably a good thing as I don't know what that exactly intails... LOL)

lastly disk 6 which is my DVD and assigned drive E

-----
The problem with the test disk is that there is no drive assigned to it. So there nothing to read. The problem is not recovering the files, the problem is the IDE to USB isn't assigning the USB device a drive letter.

I am guessing it means, the hard drive is dead, somehow the drive is passcoded, or the hardware or connection is bad.

I made sure the jumpers for the hard drive are in master and I even changed them around but no go with any of it.

I've searched on the web and I have come across others with this issue but no one has resolved it. Basically all I need is to get some txt files off it.

 

[Deleted090308]

What are disks 1, 2, 3 and 4?
How large is the old drive?
The drive hasn't got a drive letter because Windows thinks it's not formatted.

Please post a screenshot of Disk managemnet.

How to post a screenshot.

 

[Eric Post]

The hard drive is very old. It is from a computer which had WIN98 on it. It ran perfectly fine and I usually back up my data to my website. But I haven't done this since April. Then Windows crashed and I attempted to reinstall Win98 but I kept getting a message error on Scandisk (which you have to run first that said a sector is bad and Scandisk would just stall. Trying to by pass scandisk when I installed produced a link that said files are cross linked cancelling installation)

Since I could read all the files on the computer through the DOS command I figured, OK let's trash this and get a good computer and I'll just copy the data over.

So I got a new Vista computer up and running and now when I went to get into the old computer it said "1790 error disk 0 not found." So I figured OK the BIOS can't locate the new disk

Then I got a tool an IDE to USB and figured I could get into the old computer through this.

But then this problem arose. Now I got to thinking of something else, and I tried it. That old computer had a CD drive with an IDE cable. So I hooked up the CD drive to the new computer using the IDE to USB adapter and the Vista computer and I immediately got the prompt allowing me to see the CD and the files on the CD.

That got me to thinking, when I use the IDE to USB adaptor I never did hear the hard drive spin. The hard drive get's hot but I don't hear it spin, so I think the hard drive must be shot. (Which is bad for my data errrrr)

I had to do a panorama for the screen shot, as you can't see all the disk in one shot.

Disk 0 is the Computer
Disk 1,2,3,4 normally come up when you boot the computer. They are for flash drives and SD media cards and other removable devices like cameras etc

 

[Deleted090308]

Try GetDataBack (if GDB finds your file you have to pay $70 to unlock the recovery function).

Photorec is free - but retrieved files will lose their original file names.