Second HDD conflicting... Need HELP!

[mwippich]

Hello,

Have external Cavalry Back up drive that won't power on and need the data. I plug in as second drove in PC and just can's seem to get it to recognize with symptoms varying. It is SATA Maxtor 6L200M0 (200G) drive and I believe I shouldn't need jumpers for primary/secondary. Existing Drive is 320G Samsung (HD321KJ) and OS is Vista. (Bios and OS recognized the existing Drive size without issue. Once Bios finishes and OS is supposed to load it simply hangs with black screen. Any help is appreciated !!!

Mike

 

[terryd75]

Hello,

Have external Cavalry Back up drive that won't power on and need the data. I plug in as second drove in PC and just can's seem to get it to recognize with symptoms varying. It is SATA Maxtor 6L200M0 (200G) drive and I believe I shouldn't need jumpers for primary/secondary. Existing Drive is 320G Samsung (HD321KJ) and OS is Vista. (Bios and OS recognized the existing Drive size without issue. Once Bios finishes and OS is supposed to load it simply hangs with black screen. Any help is appreciated !!!

Mike

Is it an external drive? In some sort of enclosure? Is it USB? Have you tried connecting it with the computer already turned on? In ther words, wait until the computer is fully booted up, then try connecting it via USB? Sometimies, USB can have conflicts during boot process. If you've already tried that, then, tell us more about how you are connecting this drive? In other words, have you installed it into the computer and have it connected via SATA? need more info.....

 

[mwippich]

Is it an external drive? In some sort of enclosure? Is it USB? Have you tried connecting it with the computer already turned on? In ther words, wait until the computer is fully booted up, then try connecting it via USB? Sometimies, USB can have conflicts during boot process. If you've already tried that, then, tell us more about how you are connecting this drive? In other words, have you installed it into the computer and have it connected via SATA? need more info.....

Terry, it is a Cavalry external drive in an enclosure and normally would connect via USB to my PC, but when I power it on the external light displays and I hear a faint high pitch "electrical" noise but the drive is definitely NOT spinning. There aren't many internal board components so I assume the power brick is not supplying sufficient power or capacitor or other component failed....

That said, I took the drive out of the Cavalry and tried to install directly inside my PC to test it and also to get the data off to be safe. When I connect the internal PC power cable to the SATA Maxtor 6L200M0 (200G) it does spin up so was very happy the drive seemed to be working and looking forward to getting it setup inside my PC.

I haven't messed with HDD's since the days of IDE where you were required to move jumpers on the drives to set master/slave when using more than one inside your computer. From what I read about how the SATA interface works, each interface (SATA0, SATA1, etc) is independent and no jumpers are required to determine master/slave. However, when I connect this drive and turn on the PC, it gets through BIOS, displays a bar saying windows VISTA is loading, and then screen goes black and system hangs.

I verified in bios that the system is seeing the second drive. I also set the boot order to ensure the original drive is still the boot drive. Lastly as noted earlier, the original drive is a 300+GB and shows correct size when OS load. I only mention the last part as I also read that some older BIOS may have difficulty supporting drives over 32 Gig and could freeze or display weird sizes in the OS once it loads. So..... that's where I'm at and quite honestly not sure what to do at this point. Hopefully the additional details I provide add clarity to the situation. Looking forward to any suggestions and guidance. Thanks! Mike

 

[mbarnes86]

Hi

Since Booting Vista hangs with this drive added try starting in safe mode (F8)

If that fails you could get another external usb case and install the drive in that and plugin after Vista is fully open.

next option leave in PC on SATA cables and boot from Parted Magic Linux disk
This may load if problem was corruption on hard disk.
The File Manager is easily used by someone used to Windows Explorer file manager
TestDisk & PhotoRec are available on this iso

If this fails obtain the Hard disk manufacturers bootable diagnostic (dos) disk usually available as an CD iso or floppy disk version
Seagate's version will test other brands (although not do repairs on non Seagate / Maxtor disks)
This will do a test for hardware faults not software corruption which requires chkdisk /f

If these fail consider data recovery experts if you have vital data on drive

regards

Mike Barnes

 

[13thmonkey]

is the bios set to boot from the old drive or the new one? one of my machines's bios reselects the boot drive randomly everytime I add a new drive.

 

[terryd75]

At this point, i think your best option is to get another usb enclosure for that hdd and try it with windows already booted up. If that doesn't work, then the drive is almost certainly corrupted in some way, and as the gentleman above suggested, data recovery experts would be the next best option.

Your existing usb enclosure....Does it have it's own external power supply that plugs into a 115 volt outlet? Or, does it get it's power from the usb port? I ask this because i have seen a few external usb enclosures that could not power up properly from just the usb port. Some mother boards, especially older ones, just don't supply enough power through the usb port to power some devices. That is why some of the usb enclosures come with a usb cable that has two usb connectors on one end. If your cable is like that, be sure that you are plugging both of them in. That was done to ensure that the device would get enough power. So, my advice when you go shopping is to look for an enclosure that has it's own power supply. Best of luck.

 

[mwippich]

Hi

Since Booting Vista hangs with this drive added try starting in safe mode (F8)

If that fails you could get another external usb case and install the drive in that and plugin after Vista is fully open.

next option leave in PC on SATA cables and boot from Parted Magic Linux disk
This may load if problem was corruption on hard disk.
The File Manager is easily used by someone used to Windows Explorer file manager
TestDisk & PhotoRec are available on this iso

If this fails obtain the Hard disk manufacturers bootable diagnostic (dos) disk usually available as an CD iso or floppy disk version
Seagate's version will test other brands (although not do repairs on non Seagate / Maxtor disks)
This will do a test for hardware faults not software corruption which requires chkdisk /f

If these fail consider data recovery experts if you have vital data on drive

regards

Mike Barnes

Mike B.,

Thanks for the feedback. I was trying to avoid the need to purchase a new external drive but think that is clearly the easiest option to validate the integrity of the drive and also to get access to the data. If I do go that route, I will ultimately still be looking to reuse the first external drive once recovering the data and have no problem reformatting at that point and trying other options to get it working as a second drive in my PC after that. I just see no logical reason why it shouldn't work as a second drive and will spend some more time playing with the configurations you suggested later.

For reference and info sharing, I did try booting to safe mode last night while the drive was installed and PC "freezes" upon loading crcdisk.sys. After some digging I learned CRCDISK.SYS identifies itself as a "Disk Block Verification Filter Driver" and that the system may not really be hanging/freezing, but rather in process of doing a disk check that someone said could take hours for larger size drives. I'll let it run overnight and see if it clears through the process and if not, I'm off to the store for a new external USB drive! Thanks again for the advice!

Mike W.

 

[mwippich]

At this point, i think your best option is to get another usb enclosure for that hdd and try it with windows already booted up. If that doesn't work, then the drive is almost certainly corrupted in some way, and as the gentleman above suggested, data recovery experts would be the next best option.

Your existing usb enclosure....Does it have it's own external power supply that plugs into a 115 volt outlet? Or, does it get it's power from the usb port? I ask this because i have seen a few external usb enclosures that could not power up properly from just the usb port. Some mother boards, especially older ones, just don't supply enough power through the usb port to power some devices. That is why some of the usb enclosures come with a usb cable that has two usb connectors on one end. If your cable is like that, be sure that you are plugging both of them in. That was done to ensure that the device would get enough power. So, my advice when you go shopping is to look for an enclosure that has it's own power supply. Best of luck.

Terry,

I hope you saw my response to Mike B in which I provided additional details and agreed with both of your recommendations to simply buy a new external enclosure, swap the drives (unless I can buy ONLY the enclosure) and connect via USB. I will do that this week and hopefully can recover the data that way.

To answer your other question my current Cavalry external drive enclosure DOES have it's own power supply. It's a brick and has a green light indicating power is running through it, but as noted earlier I suspect it may be partially faulty and not supplying sufficient power or that something on the internal board level (capacitor, other) may have failed, though there's really not much on the board that can go bad. If possible I will try to buy equivalent external Cavalry system so I can actually test out between the power brick or the actual enclosure to see which went bad... I am very curious to know. (My guess is the brick.) Will follow up again once I work out the kinks so it can be documented for future reference.

((To 13thmonkey, I checked bios settings multiple times to ensure as best I can that it's booting from the original working drive in my PC and NOT switching to the second SATA drive I am installing in effort of recovering the data.))

Thanks to all for the suggestions and assistance!

Mike W.