External hard drive can't be read

[rvjgd]

Hi

My wife has a 2TB external harddrive by Mediamax. It stopped working so I took it out of the enclosure and examined it and it appeared that the USB cable had failed as Windows 7 would not believe me anything was attached, but the hard drive had power and was obviously spinning.

I then bought off ebay this cable:

USB to SATA 15+7 22 Pin Transfer Cable Connector Conversion 2.5" HDD Laptop PC | eBay

USB to SATA 15+7 22 Pin Transfer Cable Connector Conversion 2.5" HDD Laptop PC

In the hopes that I could then attach this to the hard drive and read the data. Now windows 7 drive manager says disk 1 is unknown and not initialised. When I tried to initialise it (I realise I don't want to) it says the drive is not ready. The Hard Drive is not spinning audibly any more. I believe it is possible that the drive is not getting enough power even though I have plugged in both USB cables of the cable shown.

I hope this is enough info.

Please help me as my wife would be ecstatic to have it working again.

Ryan

 

[carnageX]

I'd say you're not getting it enough power with that adapter.

You should get a full enclosure, or just put it internally inside of a desktop.

If Windows can't access it, see if a Linux LiveCD such as Ubuntu can access the drive.

 

[rvjgd]

Hi,

Thank you

Just tried with the old enclosure, it now has more (it is obviously spinning) and it is linked with the new cable to the computer. But the laptop (I do not have a desktop) in drive management is still saying unknown and not initialised, the right click options it gives are initialise (greyed out); offline (when you click on this it just says the device is not ready); properties (which says the device is working properly, and help.

Any further ideas please anybody?

Ryan

 

[carnageX]

Try booting off of a Linux LiveCD (such as Ubuntu) and try to access the drive.

 

[Joe C]

here's the link for Ubuntu
Download Ubuntu Desktop | Ubuntu
On the right, look under the heading of "Try Ubuntu before you install it" for a guide to make and use a bootable disk/device