Seagate Barracuda 250gb/usb caddy problems!

[tomlad]

alright everyone! let me give the lowdown on the goings on.
Basically, my pc has died on me, but luckily i have a laptop. I cant afford a new pc yet, so i bought a hard drive usb caddy thing. it works a treat with my dvd writer, and with my other hard drive (200 gig Western Digital one, with partitions and windows on the drive), but this seagate one is being a bit more of a pain. the usb drive itself can handle upto 500 gig, and i have a usb 2.0 connection (so theres no compatibilty problems, and it works with the 200fine) also, i tried to put the hard drive in another pc as slave and it found it, but didnt bring it up in windows/my computer. its the same problem on my laptop, my usb caddy finds the drive, and the name, and says its connected, but doesent bring the drive up in any explorer windows etc...
im a bit worried now that the drive might be dead (i have LOADS of data on there that i really need 2 get my mitts on). when i go into hard drive management, the drive is found but has a yellow exclimation point next to it.
i was thinking it might need checkdisc being run on it, but i dont think it will find the drive when windows nexts boots up with it being a usb drive. im thinking of perhaps using knoppix to get into the drive to see if the data is still there etc... (but ive not used knoppix for well over a year and ive pretty much forgotten how to use it lol).
so any help would be greatly appreciated, i know it might be a strange error (or it might be common for all i know) but i cant seem to find anything with the same error as me, alot of the time the errors are windows boot related, and this 250gig drive doesent have windows installed on it (my other 200gig one does and that boots fine).

thankyou!

 

[Rik]

Is it an ata drive?

 

[tomlad]

hi mate, yeah sorry, its an IDE connection and i think its one of them seagate ultra ata drives, but i dont have any sata cables or ata cables or whatever, i just have ide and the caddy itself is ide

 

[Rik]

Have you checked the jumper setting on the back of the drive?

 

[tomlad]

hi, yeah, ive checked the settings but will it make a difference? i had the 250 in as a slave in my pc before hand and i didnt have a jumper in there and the pc found it fine. but i could try that, i just need 2 find a spare jumper now, the one i already have on my 200 gig one has kinda broke, the plastic comes off but not the metal part lol so i cant get it out

 

[Rik]

Try cable select (CS) and see if that gets it working.

 

[tomlad]

nah mate that doesent work, it pings like its found something, but it doesent come up with the autoplay window (it does with the 200), but it says its connected within the device manager, and it says the device is working properly, but it still isnt coming up in my computer!

p.s. thankyou for these very quick replys too

 

[Rik]

Click start, run and type diskmgmt.msc and see if it shows up there.

 

[tomlad]

just a note, in device management, under disc management, the disc comes up, in the bottom list, and says underneath it, foreign and dynamic and it has a little "!" next 2 it. when i right click it says convert to basic? but i dont fancy clicking that just in case it wipes itself or something!

 

[Rik]

If the activate disk option isnt greyed out then try that.

 

[tomlad]

ive uploaded a picture of my disc management, i dont know what you meant in your last post, so take a look at my attatched jpeg if you want and see if you can gather any info from that

 

[Rik]

Try right clicking on the area that shows disk1 just below disk0. See if the activate disk command shows up, if so, try it.

I apologise if this post shows up twice but im having problems with my awful internet connection, its wireless and the siignal keeps dropping out.

 

[tomlad]

the only options i have are;

Convert to Basic Disc
Properties
Help

thats all


thanks again for the quick replies

 

[Rik]

Hmmmm, the format structure may be damaged. A program like partition magic may be able to help, but there are no guarantee's here. Im at a loss as to what else to suggest.


Just a thought, what windows version are you using and what windows version was the disk formatted with?

 

[tomlad]

dont worry man, i didnt know myself what might be wrong, but im beginning to think its a corrupted disc, altho it was fine untill my pc died, i will look into partitionmagic too maybe someone else will have some solutions as well

 

[tomlad]

does nobody else have any ideas what may be the problem?

 

[Tedster]

ok... provided your windows you booted off of has SP2 on it, you should be able to retrieve the data on the drive.

Your file structure may be damaged. Run CHKDSK on the drive.

Can the drive be seen in BIOS? If not, then you have a hardware issue.
If it can be seen in BIOS, then your problem may be with the file structure. Assuming the drive is not damaged or broke, use a file recovery program. There are loads of free ones on the net. I recommend: undelete plus.

 

[tomlad]

hello my friend, the drive doesent come up in the bios because its a usb drive that i have connected to my laptop. when i have put it in another pc however, it does come up in the bios, and it comes up in device management. i dont think i can run chkdsk on the drive if it is in a usb port if im correct? if so, i will have to place it back inside another pc, and run chkdsk via that, altho i cannot remember how to shedule a chkdsk, so if someone could briefly remind me that would be great!

once i have done that i will report back and see if there is a file problem of some sort.

 

[tomlad]

ok so i havent had much time to do anything recently, but i cannot run CHKDSK on the drive as it isnt assigned a drive letter, so windows wont find it! is there anyway to force windows to assign a drive letter to the hard drive, and then force chkdsk?