oBe seeks hardware assistance!

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oBe
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oBe seeks hardware assistance!

Post by oBe »

Yo word up TF!

So my HD recently and suprisingly died and I had a new one installed. There's a crucial bit of info on the dead disk that I'd like back because my life and others too may depend on it. So, I need to perform recovery on the broken disk.

I already tried opening another pc, but it had a IDE card, and the disk is a WD 1600 CAVIAR SATA and that didn't mix too well. Therefor, I'll plug it back into the comp it came from. It was my first time opening up a pc, and it went kinda flawlessly, 'cept for the fact the operation as a whole was a failure.

Now, there's already two physical disks in the native comp, so I assume I'd need to remove the slave disk and replace it with to broken one. So, I went ahead and opened the other pc.

What I found there did not please at all.
Image

What is this madness? I couldn't even find the drive I needed to replace, let alone the right one. I tried unmounting the powersupply in the upper left, but it still wouldn't budge much.

Please don't tell I need to disassemble all of this? Where do I go from here?
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boss429
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Post by boss429 »

so the dead HD is a SATA right? because those two Hard drives in the picture look like they are SATA too.
(I looks like one hard drive is under the two CD Drives and the other is positioned vertically at the bottom front of the computer case. They look like they are both held in with four screws, two on each side.)
so you could remove the secondary SATA drive (the one plugged into the secondary port on the mother board) and replace it with the old dead HD.

I don't really understand your problem, is it that you don't know how to hook up the old HD or you don't know witch is the secondary HD?
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oBe
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Post by oBe »

The drives are all sata, yes.

My problem is that I've got no knowledge of these matters and I'm afraid to screw something up.

I'm gonna try unplugging the bottom one in a few minutes, to see if that's the slave one.

My other problem is that comp's so stacked there's little room to manoevre around in it, and I'm afraid I'd have disassemble the lot of it.

But with a little bit of luck, the cables are long enough so I don't need to actually install it.

EDIT: right, so that worked.
But the old drive automatically became my master. I've heard I should change a pin but it reads "master/slave jumper not required for SATA".
I got in windows from the broken drive and could already smell succes. However, my precious data was on a partition which doesn't appear to be working anymore. I tried recovering, but the drive's too unstable and windows crashed.

What to do?

EDIT 2: Proof!
Image

The WDC is the one that acts like the master.
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Slink

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Post by Slink »

OMFG your power supply isn't screwed in! :shock:

To check for master/slave config, you can just look on the back of the drive.
On the back, there is a small jumper.
In very small print, you can see the different jumper configs listed.

Or you can try plug'n'play to see the configs. Always ALWAYS disconnect the power and ground yourself to some large metal object (or the case) before performing surgery. Never have a PSU plugged in to power with no MOBO or devices hooked up, as it may fry. ;) Good luck.

-Slink
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oBe
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Post by oBe »

The power supply was unscrewed because I wanted to look around in there. It has long since been installed back.

Now, I know of the jumper pin, but as I mentioned already, my drive reads that a jumper isn't required.
Image

Hmm, perhaps a carefully placed emoticon will bring my message across a little more clearly: :shrug:

EDIT: Okay, I replaced the pin that is there, "to enable power management" and it didn't turn up anymore. Upon changing it back, it now operates as a secondairy disk. I don't really get it, but I suppose I shouldn't complain.

The partitions still don't work, so I hope the recovery proves to be succesfull.
I'll post the results so you can stop worrying. ;)

EDIT2: Frikken' succes!! This means I haven't lost a years work of Ratmintroing. :twisted:

Machines, bow down for your leader!
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boss429
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Post by boss429 »

cool, glad you got it working. Just out of curiosity what recovery program did you use?
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oBe
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Post by oBe »

And I thought noone cared! =D

I used EZ Recovery Pro. Fantastic little proggy; recovers deleted files, formatted hard drives and fubar'ed drives with a click on the button!
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Slink

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Post by Slink »

Oh, my bad. That means your HDD was "cable select" meaning the location used on the cable determines whether it is master or slave. I think. :) Hope all turns out well. :)
-Slink
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Dimebog
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Post by Dimebog »

Yeah, I told hem that too!

But I am just happy this nightmare is over, to be honest...
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