Need Help With Hard Drive

Started by Atomm · 11 posts · 1,470 views

  1. #1
    Does anyone know of a utility I can use to check a hard drive I put into a USB enclosure? So far, everything I've tried can't even see it.

  2. #2
    Not to sound like a broken record, but linux boot cd.

    WHen you plug it it does anything install?
    Is the disk formatted? If not go into disk manager and initialize it.


    More deats brother!!!
  3. #3
    Sorry, I was kind of vague. I need something that can do a SMART analysis via the USB enclosure. It's the drive I had in my system before that crapped out. I've been able to format it, but I need to make sure it's not simply bad before I put data on it.

  4. #4
    Atomm wrote:
    Sorry, I was kind of vague. I need something that can do a SMART analysis via the USB enclosure. It's the drive I had in my system before that crapped out. I've been able to format it, but I need to make sure it's not simply bad before I put data on it.



    Honestly I;ve got nothing. When I have had drive issues I never found it worth the effort. One of them went into my 2nd tivo, but other than that drill em out and pass em on to the computer farm upstate with lots of partitions to run amongst.

    The cost of storage is too cheap and the drive working is too critical for me to consider reviving a drive
  5. #5
    When i was unsure, I have gone to the drive manufacturer and downloaded their utilities and ran them against the drive.
  6. #6
    There is one utility that will resurrect just about any drive/files. The drive will need to at least show up on your computer after a reboot.

    EASEUS Data Recovery Wizard Professional 3.3.4.

    Twice I've restored files from an external USB drive, but be prepared to wait up to 16 hrs for it to scan and give you a list of files, which can take another day to transfer to another drive.

  7. #7
    lexx wrote:
    There is one utility that will resurrect just about any drive/files. The drive will need to at least show up on your computer after a reboot.

    EASEUS Data Recovery Wizard Professional 3.3.4.

    Twice I've restored files from an external USB drive, but be prepared to wait up to 16 hrs for it to scan and give you a list of files, which can take another day to transfer to another drive.


    There are a lot of good recovery tools, it is seeing it in the external enclosure to begin with that is his problem. Atomm you may have to put it in internally to have a chance at all.
  8. #8
    Paladin, you are right. I'm going to have to suck it up and throw into a system.

    Thanks for the help everyone. I guess I knew the answer all along....

  9. #9
    Atomm wrote:
    Paladin, you are right. I'm going to have to suck it up and throw into a system.

    Thanks for the help everyone. I guess I knew the answer all along....

    I didn't add anything to the discussion, as all my Googling came up with nothing that worked with the USB 🙁

    I think you're right to go with Pal's suggestion.
  10. #10
    Atomm wrote:
    Paladin, you are right. I'm going to have to suck it up and throw into a system.

    Thanks for the help everyone. I guess I knew the answer all along....

    Pick up a hard drive cage and install it in an empty 5" bay. Cable it as a slave and just put anything in it to keep your system happy. When a need arises to check another drive, simply unplug and do a switcherao. I've done this for years.

    If your current motherboard is Sata only, you can pickup a cheap Promise IDE card to run the externals on.
  11. #11
    I really just need to check the integrity. If it's borderline or no good, I'll ditch it. I've never been good at spending money on Hard Drives. I don't know why....