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Laptop HDD Data Recovery

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by sjpknight

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Hi - I am attempting to recover some data from a 2.5inch laptop drive using a 2.5 to 3.5 IDE Cable Adaptor connected to my desktop. When I try and boot however, the laptop drive is recognised by BIOS, but it never gets past the initial BIOS splash screen.

I have tried fiddling around with the BIOS settings but it hasn't made any difference. Can anybody help me get my data back?

The 2.5 inch drive in question is a Toshiba MK4018GAS HDD2170 with 40gb of space. My desktop is a Microstar PC MT5 MED MT123A.

Thanks.

6 replies

by willcomp

Are you trying to boot from notebook drive? If so, that's the wrong approach. The desktop should be booted with its own hard disk or from a boot CD when recovering data. The UBCD4Win based on Bart PE is my recommended boot disk.
http://www.ubcd4win.com/

by robo_dev

but first connect the laptop drive and configure it as a secondary 'slave' drive.

You typically will need to set the jumpers on the main hard drive to 'master' and the laptop drive to 'slave'. Your Bios should then see both drives, and you will be able to access all data on the bad drive.

Alternately, download and burn a bootable CD such as BartPE, and boot from the CD. FRom there you can get to your data.

http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/intro/

It can be very tricky to get a laptop drive to boot when you install it in another machine.

by sjpknight

Hi - I should have mentioned that it is already connected as a slave drive. I have no problems booting when the drive is disconnected again. But as soon as I connect the drive (as slave still) the boot process hangs, even though I am booting from the same master drive as always.

by older mycroft

Clearly, if I read you correctly, you're getting nowhere (for some odd reason) using Master and Slave for your settings.

Set BOTH drives to 'Cable Select', then post back with your results.

[i]There is always the chance that your laptop drive is corrupted and causing problems when your desktop attempts to index it![/i]

by sjpknight

Hi - I tried changing the BIOS settings as advised but still no luck. I'm kind of assuming that the controller board is duff at this point.

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