Partition question

[Ayeun]

Good morning/afternoon all the smart people in the tech zone.

I have a question about Partitions:

I have an existing SATA drive from an external USB unit that has stopped working (the unit, not the drive). I have removed the drive, and inserted it in to my computer itself. However, under Disk Management, when I try to access the partitions with the stored data on them, the only option I have is to 'format them', thus loosing the data stored within.

Is there any way to have my computer recognize the original partitions without formatting them?

Thank you in advance, super smart people.

[Telume]

This is an external hard drive?

If it's not even mounting on Windows the prognosis is already not good.

I may have misunderstood your problem, could you elaborate?

[Ayeun]

Sure thing.

We had an acer aspire easyStore NAS, which contained 4 Raid linked hard drives.



I took the hard drives out of it, and connected one of them to my computer (via SATA). However, as they were setup to run as a raid in the easyStore, My computer is unable to access the data on them, allowing me to map only a small partition of the drive that was left blank. I am trying to access the data on the remaining partitions of the drive. I found several programs that claim they can do it, but they want in excess of $500 for the license keys. Is there any way to have windows detect the whole partition and grant access to it, or do I have to pay for one of these programs?

[Telume]

Hmm, it's possible that, given the partition format Windows can't access them. This is especially true with non-NTFS partition (like ext4 on Linux).

Judging from what you said, you're connecting it WITHIN the computer case as a secondary drive, yes?

Or are you using a SATA to USB cable?

In either case, I recommend trying a Live CD for Linux to see if Linux can recognize the partitions and let you access the data on them.

If its through USB it should auto-mount the moment you plug it in.

For anything else, I await your response.

[Ayeun]

Its currently connected via a Sata - USB drive mount.

The drives are in NTFS setup (whatever that means).

[Telume]

All NTFS is is the filesystem.

Okay, yeah... the prognosis on that drive ALREADY doesn't look good.

It doesn't pop up like a normal USB device under "Computer" does it?

Also, last thing I'd recommend is to try to see if you can mount it on a Linux LiveCD (if you don't know how to do that, I can give you instructions.)

[Ayeun]

Your the 2nd person who mentioned Linux to me.

My dad took over today with it, and had something called Active File Recovery, which is still scanning the drives (it started at 7am, currently 9pm.)

If this doesn't work, I would love to hear about Linux.

[Telume]

You're not the first one that's asked me about it.

As a matter of fact, the link in my signature is a good place to start.