Retrieving laptop HD data

[cameo]

My Win7 HP laptop's display suddenly failed that I assume it was due to
the NVIDIA graphics chip. It has done it once before and at that time I
fixed it by improving its heat sink and reflowing the chip's soldering
points with a heat gun. But I don't want to do such a temporary fix
again and I would instead like to get the important data off its SATA HD
by installing it in a USB enclosure and store it on my old XP PC I kept
around as a fallback PC to give me some time till a buy a new laptop.

Unfortunately the XP PC does not want to recognize that HD in the USB2
enclosure which is strange. The connection is with a Y USB cable because
I think one USB port does not provide enough power, so I connect each
leg of the Y cable on different USB port on my XP PC.

I wonder if anybody hear has done this kind of data transfer
successfully and what brand enclosure was used for it.

I know ... I should have backed up the data more frequently, but I got
too lazy with it lately and I am now paying the price for it.

 

[charlie]

My Win7 HP laptop's display suddenly failed that I assume it was due to
the NVIDIA graphics chip. It has done it once before and at that time I
fixed it by improving its heat sink and reflowing the chip's soldering
points with a heat gun. But I don't want to do such a temporary fix
again and I would instead like to get the important data off its SATA HD
by installing it in a USB enclosure and store it on my old XP PC I kept
around as a fallback PC to give me some time till a buy a new laptop.

Unfortunately the XP PC does not want to recognize that HD in the USB2
enclosure which is strange. The connection is with a Y USB cable because
I think one USB port does not provide enough power, so I connect each
leg of the Y cable on different USB port on my XP PC.

I wonder if anybody hear has done this kind of data transfer
successfully and what brand enclosure was used for it.

I know ... I should have backed up the data more frequently, but I got
too lazy with it lately and I am now paying the price for it.

Divide and conquer - -
Try the adapter with another HD.
It's possible that the win 7 HD was initialized/setup such that XP does
not know what to do with it. Or, the laptop failure was more extensive
than you thought.

Linux might be useful in recovery of the drive info,
assuming that your usb adapter works properly.

 

[philo]

My Win7 HP laptop's display suddenly failed that I assume it was due to
the NVIDIA graphics chip. It has done it once before and at that time I
fixed it by improving its heat sink and reflowing the chip's soldering
points with a heat gun. But I don't want to do such a temporary fix
again and I would instead like to get the important data off its SATA HD
by installing it in a USB enclosure and store it on my old XP PC I kept
around as a fallback PC to give me some time till a buy a new laptop.

Unfortunately the XP PC does not want to recognize that HD in the USB2
enclosure which is strange. The connection is with a Y USB cable because
I think one USB port does not provide enough power, so I connect each
leg of the Y cable on different USB port on my XP PC.

I wonder if anybody hear has done this kind of data transfer
successfully and what brand enclosure was used for it.

I know ... I should have backed up the data more frequently, but I got
too lazy with it lately and I am now paying the price for it.

Interesting in that I recently had to perform a data recovery from a
laptop two weeks ago and ran into the identical problem.

I ended up solving it by installing the laptop's hard drive directly
into the machine itself and not using the enclosure.


The enclosure I used, and probably yours though working fine with a
standard drive absolutely did not work with the laptop drive.

 

[Mark F]

Divide and conquer - -
Try the adapter with another HD.
It's possible that the win 7 HD was initialized/setup such that XP does
not know what to do with it. Or, the laptop failure was more extensive
than you thought.

Other things to try:
.. use an adapter that supplies its own power (Oyen Digital
has several, but there are other choices.)
.. Get a passive converter that switches the connections on the laptop
SATA drive to something SATA for a desktop and connect to a desktop
(Apricon has hardware for that. They also have a disk adapter
thing:

http://www.apricorn.com/products/notebook-hard-drive-upgrade-kits.html
but I don't know if it passive.)
.. If a BIOS can see the drive but Windows or other operating system
doesn't see the drive, get www.grc.com's SpinRite software and give
it a try.
.. beyond that are various physical things, such putting the drive in
a freezer, but at that point I would suggest a nationwide disk
recovery vendor. (In some cases you a local computer store would
be able to handle this for you, possibly for a markup, but don't
let a local computer store try to do fancy stuff like switching
circuit boards [It is possible to switch boards and even switch
heads without a clean room, but chance of failure is too high.
{I've switched boards with success and opened a drive and spun
the drive by hand for fun, but I wouldn't trust myself or
a local computer store to do that on a drive that I cared about}])
.. I wouldn't even trust chain stores to do anything that involves
taking apart a drive unless they do the work at
a central location.
.. You could also try the disk drive manufacturer.

I think that some of the nationwide recovery services work for
no charge unless they get the data back. Figure a few hundred to
a few thousand US dollars. I don't know what the manufacturers
charge.

 

[Tim Slattery]

Unfortunately the XP PC does not want to recognize that HD in the USB2
enclosure which is strange. The connection is with a Y USB cable because
I think one USB port does not provide enough power, so I connect each
leg of the Y cable on different USB port on my XP PC.

I've had success with this gizmo:
http://www.newertech.com/images/hr/NWTU2NVSPATA.pdf

Supports "normal" 2.5" notebook drives, IDE and SATA. It has a
separate power source for IDE and SATA drives. Allowed me to read my
laptop's drive (2.5") when the machine died.

 

[mick]

My Win7 HP laptop's display suddenly failed that I assume it was due to the

NVIDIA graphics chip. It has done it once before and at that time I fixed it
by improving its heat sink and reflowing the chip's soldering points with a
heat gun. But I don't want to do such a temporary fix again and I would
instead like to get the important data off its SATA HD by installing it in a
USB enclosure and store it on my old XP PC I kept around as a fallback PC to
give me some time till a buy a new laptop.

Unfortunately the XP PC does not want to recognize that HD in the USB2
enclosure which is strange. The connection is with a Y USB cable because I
think one USB port does not provide enough power, so I connect each leg of
the Y cable on different USB port on my XP PC.

I wonder if anybody hear has done this kind of data transfer successfully and
what brand enclosure was used for it.

I know ... I should have backed up the data more frequently, but I got too
lazy with it lately and I am now paying the price for it.

No need for an enclosure.
I have a Double Dragon MDT-USA003 but I don't think you can buy it
anymore. Fantastic bit of kit for reading hard drives and transferring
data. Alternatively this looks near identical.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Bipra-SATA-Adapter-Power-Drive/dp/B001A5SK56/ref=pd_rhf_se_p_t_1_4AC0

 

[Paul]

My Win7 HP laptop's display suddenly failed that I assume it was due to
the NVIDIA graphics chip. It has done it once before and at that time I
fixed it by improving its heat sink and reflowing the chip's soldering
points with a heat gun. But I don't want to do such a temporary fix
again and I would instead like to get the important data off its SATA HD
by installing it in a USB enclosure and store it on my old XP PC I kept
around as a fallback PC to give me some time till a buy a new laptop.

Unfortunately the XP PC does not want to recognize that HD in the USB2
enclosure which is strange. The connection is with a Y USB cable because
I think one USB port does not provide enough power, so I connect each
leg of the Y cable on different USB port on my XP PC.

I wonder if anybody hear has done this kind of data transfer
successfully and what brand enclosure was used for it.

I know ... I should have backed up the data more frequently, but I got
too lazy with it lately and I am now paying the price for it.

It's a SATA drive. The connector on a SATA 2.5" laptop drive, is the
same as the SATA 3.5" desktop drive.

When I make copies of my laptop drive, I set it on the table next
to the PC, and run a SATA power and data cable to the drive. Works fine.

There is one other size of drive, 1.8" SSD, which uses microSATA, and
for those, you need an adapter because of the nature of the connector.
But the regular 2.5" and 3.5" SATA drives are interchangeable.

*******

The laptop drive requirements, can be 5V @ 1A during drive spinup.
And much less current, once the drive is up to speed. If you
connect the USB2 enclosure to a laptop, some of those turn off
the USB current flow at a relatively low current. And that can
cause the drive to fail to spin up. According to the Intel designer
docs for USB, Intel recommends setting the fusing current at
higher than the USB 500mA limit (i.e. "don't be a Policeman").
The fusing is supposed to be set to protect connectors and wires,
rather than stopping current flow at precisely 501mA per port.
As a consequence, the fuse should be set at 1 amp or 1.5 amps
or so.

*******

With the dual head USB cable, it should have worked. When using
dual head (USB "Y" cable) with an enclosure, the forks of
the Y should be plugged into separate stacks.

USBw USBy
USBx USBz

In that diagram, there are two "stacks" on the back of my PC.
The "w" and "x" share a fuse. The "y" and "z" share a fuse.
(Industry adherence to this method, is pretty consistent.)
If I was using a USB2 2.5" enclosure, I connect the Y cable
to "w" and "y". Or, to "x" and "z". That way, two fuses
share the load a bit.

*******

Another possibility, is the enclosure does not support "large
capacity drives". You'd need to research reviews of the
enclosure, to see if past users have had a problem with it.
While I see no logical reason for that to be a problem,
you should check what other users have seen with the product.

Paul

 

[charlie]

It's a SATA drive. The connector on a SATA 2.5" laptop drive, is the
same as the SATA 3.5" desktop drive.

When I make copies of my laptop drive, I set it on the table next
to the PC, and run a SATA power and data cable to the drive. Works fine.

There is one other size of drive, 1.8" SSD, which uses microSATA, and
for those, you need an adapter because of the nature of the connector.
But the regular 2.5" and 3.5" SATA drives are interchangeable.

*******

The laptop drive requirements, can be 5V @ 1A during drive spinup.
And much less current, once the drive is up to speed. If you
connect the USB2 enclosure to a laptop, some of those turn off
the USB current flow at a relatively low current. And that can
cause the drive to fail to spin up. According to the Intel designer
docs for USB, Intel recommends setting the fusing current at
higher than the USB 500mA limit (i.e. "don't be a Policeman").
The fusing is supposed to be set to protect connectors and wires,
rather than stopping current flow at precisely 501mA per port.
As a consequence, the fuse should be set at 1 amp or 1.5 amps
or so.

*******

With the dual head USB cable, it should have worked. When using
dual head (USB "Y" cable) with an enclosure, the forks of
the Y should be plugged into separate stacks.

USBw USBy
USBx USBz

In that diagram, there are two "stacks" on the back of my PC.
The "w" and "x" share a fuse. The "y" and "z" share a fuse.
(Industry adherence to this method, is pretty consistent.)
If I was using a USB2 2.5" enclosure, I connect the Y cable
to "w" and "y". Or, to "x" and "z". That way, two fuses
share the load a bit.

*******

Another possibility, is the enclosure does not support "large
capacity drives". You'd need to research reviews of the
enclosure, to see if past users have had a problem with it.
While I see no logical reason for that to be a problem,
you should check what other users have seen with the product.

Paul

With win 7, likely due to controller driver limitations, I've had
occasional problems with large drive transfers to external USB I/O
drives. Usually there is no problem with whole directory trees, unless
I'm starting with the root directory and everything under it.
I started running into this fairly recently, due to adding SSD drives
into P/Cs that are just a few years old.
What was really interesting was that Paragon's software would work when
the SSD mfrs utilities would not. (Samsung, Kingston, and even Windows 7)

 

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

In message <[email protected]>, mick

No need for an enclosure.
I have a Double Dragon MDT-USA003 but I don't think you can buy it
anymore. Fantastic bit of kit for reading hard drives and transferring
data. Alternatively this looks near identical.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Bipra-SATA-Adapter-Power-Drive/dp/B001A5SK56/ref
=pd_rhf_se_p_t_1_4AC0

Wow, but at £26.99 though. http://bit.ly/10ZUwpC shows that there are
lots available - mostly about £7 with the power supply and under £4
without - a cheap one being http://bit.ly/10ZV0w2 for £4.98 with the
adaptor and http://bit.ly/10ZW2Ik for £1.98 without (though I wouldn't
necessarily go for the cheapest). [All of these will do IDE as well as
SATA too.]

[These are all ebay addresses, for new product.]

 

[cameo]

lots available - mostly about £7 with the power supply and under £4
without - a cheap one being http://bit.ly/10ZV0w2 for £4.98 with the
adaptor and http://bit.ly/10ZW2Ik for £1.98 without (though I wouldn't
necessarily go for the cheapest). [All of these will do IDE as well as
SATA too.]

Thanks for all the responses, but before we go any further, I should
mention that I am in the US, so UK stuff would probably not be very
convenient.

My 2.5" laptop drive is indeed a SATA and draws .55 Amp, according to
the label on it. I don't think my old XP's USB connectors can handle
that much power and I'm not sure if the two are on separate circuit. But
I do have those AC adapters for USB chargers, so I tried to get the
power to one leg of the Y cable from that AC-USB adapter. But that
didn't work either. I've got the following error message from that
attempt:

http://i50.tinypic.com/25h0ikj.gif

Though I am pretty sure the problem is with my GeForce GPU again, but
since one of you mentioned trying Linux, I could actually verify it with
a bootable thumb drive Linux distro. I used that distro before on my
laptop and it worked fine, so we'll see ...

I was also wondering if my old XP can even handle the 250GB laptop drive
even though the file system is NTFS on both. The boot sector though on
the laptop is a bit different because originally it was set up for dual
boot which was later disabled and the alternate partition was than
reused as another logical drive.

 

[s|b]

It's a SATA drive. The connector on a SATA 2.5" laptop drive, is the
same as the SATA 3.5" desktop drive.

That's what I was thinking. When my mother's laptop died, I took the
SATA hdd out and connected it to my desktop. No problems at all.

 

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

lots available - mostly about £7 with the power supply and under £4
without - a cheap one being http://bit.ly/10ZV0w2 for £4.98 with the
adaptor and http://bit.ly/10ZW2Ik for £1.98 without (though I wouldn't
necessarily go for the cheapest). [All of these will do IDE as well as
SATA too.]

Thanks for all the responses, but before we go any further, I should
mention that I am in the US, so UK stuff would probably not be very
convenient.

Well, the cheapest were from Hong Kong, so probably cost the same for
you as us! Basically, I just put "USB to SATA" into ebay's search box; I
guess the same would work for your ebay. (I quoted the £ prices in
response to the person who gave the amazon.co.uk link which was in £.)

My 2.5" laptop drive is indeed a SATA and draws .55 Amp, according to
the label on it. I don't think my old XP's USB connectors can handle
that much power and I'm not sure if the two are on separate circuit.

The USB specification says 500 mA (0.5A) per socket, so a Y cable
_should_ be OK; however, I suppose it could take a bigger surge to get
it spun up, for long enough to trip the protection. Especially if it's
sticking. (Does it _sound_ as if it's OK?)

But I do have those AC adapters for USB chargers, so I tried to get the
power to one leg of the Y cable from that AC-USB adapter. But that
didn't work either. I've got the following error message from that
attempt:

http://i50.tinypic.com/25h0ikj.gif

(I liked "Images You'll Also Enjoy"!)

Though I am pretty sure the problem is with my GeForce GPU again, but
since one of you mentioned trying Linux, I could actually verify it
with a bootable thumb drive Linux distro. I used that distro before on
my laptop and it worked fine, so we'll see ...

Tell us how you get on.

 

[philo]

lots available - mostly about £7 with the power supply and under £4
without - a cheap one being http://bit.ly/10ZV0w2 for £4.98 with the
adaptor and http://bit.ly/10ZW2Ik for £1.98 without (though I wouldn't
necessarily go for the cheapest). [All of these will do IDE as well as
SATA too.]

Thats why I told you to connect it internally.

In the time it took you to read all the posts here and respond,
you could have had all the data retrieved by now...
and at no cost.

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

Interesting in that I recently had to perform a data recovery from a
laptop two weeks ago and ran into the identical problem.

I ended up solving it by installing the laptop's hard drive directly
into the machine itself and not using the enclosure.

The enclosure I used, and probably yours though working fine with a
standard drive absolutely did not work with the laptop drive.

SATA laptop drives are standard drives; they have the same power and
data connections as a 3.5" drive. Something else must be wrong...

I have several SATA adapters and docking stations that work on both size
drives, and I can tell you categorically that both 3.5" and 2.5" SATA
drives plug into the same connectors, and both work fine, on all of
them.

 

[Paul]

lots available - mostly about £7 with the power supply and under £4
without - a cheap one being http://bit.ly/10ZV0w2 for £4.98 with the
adaptor and http://bit.ly/10ZW2Ik for £1.98 without (though I wouldn't
necessarily go for the cheapest). [All of these will do IDE as well as
SATA too.]

Thanks for all the responses, but before we go any further, I should
mention that I am in the US, so UK stuff would probably not be very
convenient.

My 2.5" laptop drive is indeed a SATA and draws .55 Amp, according to
the label on it. I don't think my old XP's USB connectors can handle
that much power and I'm not sure if the two are on separate circuit. But
I do have those AC adapters for USB chargers, so I tried to get the
power to one leg of the Y cable from that AC-USB adapter. But that
didn't work either. I've got the following error message from that attempt:

http://i50.tinypic.com/25h0ikj.gif

Though I am pretty sure the problem is with my GeForce GPU again, but
since one of you mentioned trying Linux, I could actually verify it with
a bootable thumb drive Linux distro. I used that distro before on my
laptop and it worked fine, so we'll see ...

I was also wondering if my old XP can even handle the 250GB laptop drive
even though the file system is NTFS on both. The boot sector though on
the laptop is a bit different because originally it was set up for dual
boot which was later disabled and the alternate partition was than
reused as another logical drive.

On Linux, you can try "lsusb" to get Plug and Play numbers for analysis.
On Windows, UVCView would be the tool of choice.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080530005149AAlOOw0

UVCView used to be on web.archive.org, but Microsoft had it removed.
It used to be on the Microsoft site as well, but was removed from there first.
I don't understand why Microsoft doesn't think this tool has value.

MD5SUM = 93244d84d79314898e62d21cecc4ca5e *UVCView.x86.exe 167,232 bytes

This is some data from the last time I used it.

idVendor: 0x04A9 = Canon Inc.
idProduct: 0x3241
bInterfaceClass: 0x06 -> This is an Image USB Device Interface Class

I can then look up the device info here. 3241 = PowerShot ELPH 110

http://www.linux-usb.org/usb.ids

I would expect a working disk enclosure, to mention USB Mass Storage class
in the data somewhere.

If the adapter chip inside the enclosure is Cypress brand, it's possible
for the configuration data to get erased, by tools like Seagate Seatools.
What happens in that case, is the drive no longer shows up as a USB Mass Storage
class device. There is a recovery procedure, which can re-program the configuration
information when that happens. I know, because I had to fix my enclosure when
it got erased :-(

Paul

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

My 2.5" laptop drive is indeed a SATA and draws .55 Amp, according to
the label on it. I don't think my old XP's USB connectors can handle
that much power and I'm not sure if the two are on separate circuit. But
I do have those AC adapters for USB chargers, so I tried to get the
power to one leg of the Y cable from that AC-USB adapter. But that
didn't work either. I've got the following error message from that
attempt:

http://i50.tinypic.com/25h0ikj.gif

Be sure that you use the data branch of the Y for data and the power
branch for power

I suspect you did, because it's pretty obvious, but people (me too!)
make some pretty silly mistakes in the heat of battle. In fact, I've
made precisely that mistake.

The straight cable is the data one and the one on the loop is power.
Probably.

BTW, I had a laptop in which the USB hard drive adapter would fail with
one USB port and would work fine with the other...

 

[cameo]

On 03/29/2013 12:56 PM, cameo wrote:
Thats why I told you to connect it internally.

In the time it took you to read all the posts here and respond,
you could have had all the data retrieved by now...
and at no cost.

But my XP machine has only SCSI and IDE drives. No SATA, so I could not
connect the SATA drive internally.

 

[cameo]

Be sure that you use the data branch of the Y for data and the power
branch for power

I suspect you did, because it's pretty obvious, but people (me too!)
make some pretty silly mistakes in the heat of battle. In fact, I've
made precisely that mistake.

The straight cable is the data one and the one on the loop is power.
Probably.

BTW, I had a laptop in which the USB hard drive adapter would fail
with
one USB port and would work fine with the other...

Well, the documentation about it pretty flimsy and I think it probably
shows it wrong:

http://i49.tinypic.com/t8x94p.jpg

I would expect the small pigtail to be at the enclosure end as that's
where the extra USB power is needed. The pigtail is a thinner wire than
the longer straight one, BTW. In any case, I tried all the possible
combinations and in some cases I got no feedback from the XP at all, in
others I got that "Unknown Device" error msg.

I also tried the bootable Linux thumb drive, but I didn't even get the
BIOS screen up. So I am about to disassemble my laptop and redo the
graphics chip reflow. If that doesn't work, I'm going to have to look
for some better tools to retrieve the HD data and transfer it to a new
PC.

 

[philo]

But my XP machine has only SCSI and IDE drives. No SATA, so I could not
connect the SATA drive internally.

Must be an old mobo then. A PCI SATA controller is about $15
you'd also need an adapter for the power connection if your PSU has only
molex

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

Well, the documentation about it pretty flimsy and I think it probably
shows it wrong:

http://i49.tinypic.com/t8x94p.jpg

I would expect the small pigtail to be at the enclosure end as that's
where the extra USB power is needed. The pigtail is a thinner wire than
the longer straight one, BTW. In any case, I tried all the possible
combinations and in some cases I got no feedback from the XP at all, in
others I got that "Unknown Device" error msg.

I also tried the bootable Linux thumb drive, but I didn't even get the
BIOS screen up. So I am about to disassemble my laptop and redo the
graphics chip reflow. If that doesn't work, I'm going to have to look
for some better tools to retrieve the HD data and transfer it to a new
PC.

The documentation you link to doesn't show *anything*. It shows the
cable pointing to a monitor with no hint as to which is the power lead.

Do this: plug the straight lead at the Y-end into a USB port on the
computer. Plug the short thin lead at the Y-end into a 5-volt USB
supply.

With the computer powered on, plug the single end of the cable into the
drive enclosure.

BTW, does the cable really have a male A connector at the drive end as
the picture shows? That's unusual. IMO, unique.