Reading data off an ancient hard drive - will this work?

[Frankenfurter]

Hi all,

I've got a hard drive here from a busted old Dell (blown PSU, who knows what else went) and I've been asked to pull all the documents off of it. The difficulty is that it's a PATA drive and my PC doesn't have PATA connectors.

My plan is to get one of these so I can hook it up like a SATA drive (except with molex for power I think). Once I've got the data I then might use the cable so I can reuse an old DVD drive instead of getting a new one, but I guess that's not really relevant.

Anyway... Will this work? Is there a better way? And is it safe to plug it into my system given its origins in a PC with a blown PSU (presumably the drive could be fried)?

Thanks for reading,
Frankie

[Jonj1611]

Yes that would work and no the PSU going shouldn't affect the hard drive, yes I guess its possible that it could have blown the hard drive power but its unlikely, worst case scenario the drive just wont work.

[Frankenfurter]

Awesome, good to know. Fingers crossed my neighbor can get his files back.

Cheers Jon!

[Jonj1611]

No worries mate, all the best with it

[Flibb]

If you just want to get data off a drive these USB to SATA / IDE adapters are great
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/USB-To-2-5...item27e310827b

I have a couple and find them useful sorting out problems with old drives.

[Frankenfurter]

Hey Fibb,

I'll consider those, thanks. What's the speed like compared to using the internal connections?

[Flibb]

Pretty slow, but if your just after bits of data they are fine. I also have one of those adapters fitted permanently to a DVD drive, works fine, instructions were pretty non existent with the one I have, think I had to set the jumpers on the drive in a certain way.

[Frankenfurter]

Ok, well thanks for the advice.

I think I'll stick with the internal option as I could have quite a lot of data to retrieve. Plus I get to use it for the DVD drive.

[scaryjim]

tbh the USB option is just ridiculously useful for all sorts of things - don't know where I'd be without mine. It's no worse than using a USB hard drive, so it's not really slow as such, particularly with PATA drives which had a fairly slow interface to start with. One thing I would say is that the one Flibb linked to doesn't provide power to a conventional drive, but there are a few similar devices that do, and I think it's well worth getting one of those just to save the hassle of having to source and remember the extra power adapters. Obviously if you're looking for a single use device just for this instance the internal adapter might be faster, but if you want something that will be more useful in the long term, I'd definitely consider the USB option - great for working with small form factors or if you want to transfer data onto a laptop, for instance...

[kompukare]

Don't forget the basic data recovery process:

• treat the drive like it will fail any second
• have a location prepared to take any data you can recovery
• priorities the data you want to recovery. That is, don't image the whole drive or copy the \Windows folder if you only really need \My Documents
• consider using Linux especially if the drive is NTFS so you don't have to mess with NTFS file permissions

Nothing worse than trying to get stuff of a drive and seeing it work at first and then die when copying stuff over and later finding that what you actually managed to copy was all useless stuff.

As for USB vs that adapter. Well, those USB things are very useful indeed. But some of them will not work with every command so you might not have and SMART status and so on. Not sure whether those SATA>PATA adapters support those commands though. For data recovery, a PCIe/PCI PATA adapter is probable the best but hardest to justify.

[shaithis]

PATA>SATA converters seem to be awesome for this kind of thing although don't seem to work under AHCI.

[mycarsavw]

I've just recovered data from a Seagate ST31081A (with a build date of 09/08/1996!) which was taken from an old 386dx 25 using one of these.

I bought it a few years ago and I use it a few times a month - well worth the investment imho.

[Frankenfurter]

I swear I already posted here... must not've hit send I guess. >.<

Anyway - thanks for all the knowledge everyone.

All of my own drives are SATA III now so I'm unlikely to ever have to read off an old drive again, this is really just one off and long term solutions wont be necessary.

Cheers for the heads up about AHCI, shaithis. There were a couple of AHCI options in BIOS I think so I'll have to take a look at them.

1996, mycarsavw! Must've been quite the time capsule.

And I'll be sure to do that, kompukare, thanks.

[Pob255]

Depending on how often you have to try to recover data of of drives that desktop unit mycarsavw suggested is great, I have the same thing, although mine is a startech one http://uk.startech.com/HDD/Docking/U...-HDD~UNIDOCK2U (mind you it wasn't that expensive when I got it) I've also got an ide to pata cable for recovering data off old laptop 2.5" pata drives.
Granted I've not used the ide function of it for a while now, last time I used it was to plug a fan in via the molex port, fan was held onto the box with bluetac, so I could get some cooling on a sata hard drive I was recovering data off.
I've used an IDE to sata adaptor before, they work, not fast, but they work and they are a lot of hassle if you find yourself doing this sort of recovery regularly, for one off it's fine.

[Frankenfurter]

That's all good then, it will be just a one off.

I'm surprised they're not fast though. I'd have thought going through SATA would be quicker than USB at least...

[Bonebreaker777]

I had few of those USB bridges but the only thing ever failed was the power brick.
Thankfully the eBay seller was always helpful to send a spare.

Out of curiosity: what kind of data are still needed to be rescued on an 18y old drive. If I may ask.