Reading data off external hard drive.

Question

This is a recovery mission. I need help trying to get data off a Dimesion E510 hard drive. I removed the the hard drive from this computer and put it in a (external) hard drive enclosure. the connection from this external hard drive to my laptop (dell inspiron 8600) is USB. When i plug the external hard drive into the laptop and try to access the data on the drive. The computer recognizes it as a USB drive but gives me the error message 'E:\ is not accessible The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable'. Im pretty sure the drive isn't damaged. Im wondering if someone can tell me whether i need to change some settings to finally get access to the data on this hard drive.

aleks3304 · Answer

the check disk doesn't run doesn't even start

mombodog · Answer

Run a chkdsk /r  on the drive   Tick the 'automatically fix file system errors' , leave the other one un checked, hit start, it may take a while, be patient.   http://vlaurie.com/computers2/Articles/chkdsk.htm     Message Edited by mombodog on 11-02-2007 04:36 PM

mombodog · Answer

You will need to connect the drive as a secondary hard drive in a PC, don't use the usb enclosure.   After doing this, boot the PC, if the file system is corrupt, the chkdsk should run automatically before windows loads, let it run, when done the PC should load the desktop, now see if you have access to the files.   If you connect the drive to a Dell, be sure the jumper on the back of the dive is set to Cable Select (CS).   The hard drive may be damaged beyond recovery if this method fails to give results.

Jim_Hill · Answer

My E510 hard drive has a hidden partition with Norton software used to easily restore the computer to the "as received" configuration. It also has Ghost 10, which places images on a secondary hard drive, installed in the computer, and the drives are in a RAID configuration (if I remember correctly). I wanted to use Partition magic to add an extended drive, but was not able to do so.

If your computer has a similar setup, I wonder if the configuration is part of the issue? Let us know how you resolved the problem.

Jim

Storage, Drives & Media

Reading data off external hard drive.

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