Rescuing data off an old Toshiba 480 CDT

M

Musicalls

Posts: 19   +0
Hi all,

Objective.... to rescue some Movies and piks for my brother, from his ANCIENT Toshiba Satellite Pro 480cdt - Windows 98SE - No rescue/OS disks. (Computer 2nd hand ) . The OS doesnt matter so much.

HDD... Not sure of size but would it be 4GIG from specs below?

IBM OEM Model DTCA - 24090 E182115 HG Made in Hungary
MAR 98 P/N : 09J1195 4090 MB
MLC : F03078

The current status : On attempted bootup the Error message appears:

"Invalid system disk ...replace the disk, and then press any key."

"Any key" produces a replica message. Only option to power down was to pull the power plug. There were 2 green lights and an orange one active. These had little diagrams below. Power, A loptop with "on" in the screen, & a battery, respectively. 3 Lights were unlit. A battery with a square around it, something that looks like three disks/platters and another with a disk inside a square. I suspect one of these to be the hard drive light. I didnt hear any clicking or any horrible noises.

Ive spent some time searching this error, and the upshot is it could just as likely be terminal as not. So what should I try 1st, to have the best possible success?

WOuld my safest 1st move be to just try hooking it up to my IDE/USB adapter like in my recent thread with a Compaq HDD rescue?

Cheers
Joanne
 
i think (only based on googling that error message) the problem might be a corrupt boot sector (vs. a disk that won't spin or has otherwise physically failed) see Error Message "Invalid System Disk" After Setup Reboots.

In which case, yes, i think removing the drive and connecting it to a USB adapter on a different computer makes sense for next first step. If you ultimately need any data recovery tools, see the tools in Section 3 of THIS post
 
Thanks Mark56 for your help again, and thanks LookinAround.

I will check out these links. I might point out that this drive doesnt have an adapter fitted like the other one. Its just your typical male pins.

The data isnt real crucial like Itll be the end of the world, but would be nice if I could recover it, and it wont be much only being a 4 Gig drive and all, ..... Its more me looking for a challenge :)))).

Ive also downloaded a tool ready to burn to an ISO if I need to.

BTW this old laptop is built like a tank! and anything that people said about it that I came across was only glowing reports.

Cheers
Joanne
 
OK guys, this drives pins appear to be the standard size that goes in your tower. The HDD is in a silver "holder" tray that is snug around the drive, which looks to me to be nothing other than a means to slide the HD out easier rather than an adapter for a 2.5" to a 3.5" drive. My understanding is that it does matter which way up the adapter goes on. The Laptop side of the adapter has 2 rows of holes but minus one hole near the center so as to not plug it in the wrong way up. The standard size is just 2 rows of holes. On the HDD it has a pin missing near the center and one gap at the end where theres a further 4 pins are (which I take are for power? ) So which way do I plug the adapter in????

Well it looks like I got confused with those 4 pins, which I now take to be HDD jumpers for Master and Slave. Also the pins do indeed look like Laptop distance apart after all.

Thanks
Joanne
 
SUCCESS AGAIN !!!!! : ))).

Thanks guys for your help. Files recovered (albeit only a few as Drive is 60% free). Drive as sturdy as it looks and fired up no probs at all. Now Im trying to recover files that were deleted ... and so far Ive used Free Undelete, Restoration, and Photorecord. Using Photorecord has a Cmd prompt type GUI and allows you to select file types. However it turned up nothing on JPGs .... Ah well, with nothing to lose, when I think of something else to try I will.


Cheers
Joanne
 
You might also try PC Inspector. Glad to hear you've had some success!

/* EDIT */
Click the help tab on the tool to see the 4 steps to follow
 
Hey Guys, havent kept up with this as our little Country (NZ) had a devastating earthquake a couple of days ago and forums etc has been the last thing on my mind.

Ill be back sometime.

Thanks for your help.

Joanne
 
Hi Mark, Thanks for your links. Im not that familiar with Linux though I did muck around with Knoppix some years ago. I didnt DL 'Disk Data Recovery Software' as its shareware, so I thought Id try the free options 1st.

Thankyou LookinAround for your kind thoughts. We are not affected where we are, but my husband has family in CHCH who are OK, thankfully.

I Dl'd and installed PC Inspector, but as far as Im aware there was no way to view JPEGs before restoring. I dug Recuva out of my system which isnt with my other utes and so forgot about it. Anywayz youre able to view the piks and choose what to recover. In this case, and as can be expected, on such a small drive (4GIGs), there wasnt a lot to recover except 1000's of tiny junk/temp files from browsing etc, but ah well....

Hehe....the next 'challenge' my bro gave me..... well he decided he wanted to recover his emails to get addresses off. We all know emails present a bit of a different case than just the usual files that we save and more so (I take it) where OE is involved. I had NO IDEA AT ALL that there was such a thing as an address book file until I thought about it. It is a .wab file. After a bit of nutting it out I knew Id be able to track this down somewhere in the system files ...... ha, success again :)))). Got those email addies no troubs at all. I have to applaud Windows search here, as Wind98's pathway aint the same as XP's, and that was the quickest way to find it.

You never know what you might achieve unless you try.

Thanks guys
Joanne
 
Derek

Hi there.

Maybe you've done everything you want to.

However if not let me make some observations.

The error message you got doesn't tell you anything (good or bad) about the hardware. However the odds are that it is just a boot problem, ie software, and the fact that you have managed to copy files since almost guaratees the drive is working.

If you want to reassemble the Toshiba and boot it you will need either a bootable floppy disk or CD for W98 (even W95 might do!) I f you make sure the CMOS is set to the boot order Floppy,CD,HD then whever you are using will boot. From the floppy you will be able to use simple DIR to view the HD. Booting from a W98SE CD will enable you to do a Repair which might get th HD booting again.

Alternatively here's a more radical approach. Get the Acronis software which does disk management as well as backup and recovery and make a bootable CD. Boot the Toshiba using this CD and you will find there is a Partition management option (can't remember what it's called). (You can even use an Explore option to see if the disk has the info you want)

Now only do the following when you have a clear head, although Acronis only carries out actions when you confirm them, so you can carry out quite a detailed simulation without actually altering anything. Vundabar!

Move the start of the partition towards the end of the disk so that a new partition can be created at the start of the disk. This assumes that there is some free space on the HD. Create the new partition (Primary FAT32 for W98). If all looks good confirm and the actions will then be carried out.

You now have a HD with two patitions (after reboot). The first is blank and available for an operating system to be installed. If space is short use the "minimal" install.

When the new operating system is working you will be able to read the contents of the original partition as if they were on another disk.

Hope this helps.
 
George2001 this thread ended in January with a satisfactory conclusion. If you want to offer help then look for threads that are still active and make sure you read them through.
 
I'm glad to help you! I sent you a mail through youtube to explaine everything. Check your mailbox and tell me if you need something else!
 
Hi Tiya, as I pointed out to George2001 this thread was resolved in January.

If you wish to add a uesful fix for the problem then please put it in the thread so it can then be of benefit to others that may have the same problem.
 
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