Removed the HD from a BusLink 10GB USB drive to determine if the drive or the circuit board was the reason for a recent stoppage. Turns out that the BusLink is a circuit board supporting an interface to an IBM Travelstar laptop drive. The device uses a USB-IDE bridge with a SCSI device driver. The drive itself is a standard ATA-5 interface. So, bought an adapter so I could hook up the HD only to a regular IDE interface. Booted up a Win98 system: The drive was recognized in the startup sequence. However, at the C:\ prompt before GUI loaded, the boot seemed to halt. I noticed the drive access light turned on and off repeatedly. Finally booted into windows. Neither My Computer nor Explorer indicated drive letter assignment for the drive, but Device Manager in control panel shows the drive and that it is working properly. Is there anything else to do before concluding that the HD is fried?

Load FDISK and see if theres a partition on it? Try some data recovery software?

Windows fdisk shows partition on E: drive bit numbers look screwey. Switched to Linux: fdisk /dev/hdc showed Disk /dev/hdc: 10.0 GB, 10056130560 bytes 251 heads, 63 sectors/tracks, 1242 cylinders units = cylinders of 15813 x 512 = 8096256 bytes Device Boot Start End Blocks ID System /dev/hdc1 2122 5485 26584355 c Win 95 Fat32 (LBA) /dev/hdc2 2122 4244 1677472 0 Empty Partition 2 does not end on cylinder boundary /dev/hdc3 2122 4244 1677472 0 Empty Partition 3 does not end on cylinder boundary /dev/hdc4 2122 4244 1677472 0 Empty Partition 3 does not end on cylinder boundary delected partitions 2,3,4; tried to mount /dev/hdc1 hdc: dma_intr: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error } hdc: dma_intr: error=0x10 { SectorIdNotFound }, LBAsect=33555007, sector=0 hdc: dma_intr: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error } hdc: dma_intr: error=0x10 { SectorIdNotFound }, LBAsect=33555007, sector=0 hdc: dma_intr: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error } hdc: dma_intr: error=0x10 { SectorIdNotFound }, LBAsect=33555007, sector=0 hdc: dma_intr: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error } hdc: dma_intr: error=0x10 { SectorIdNotFound }, LBAsect=33555007, sector=0 ide1: reset: success hdc: read_intr: status=0x59 { DriveReady SeekComplete DataRequest Error } hdc: read_intr: error=0x10 { SectorIdNotFound }, LBAsect=33555007, sector=0 hdc: read_intr: status=0x59 { DriveReady SeekComplete DataRequest Error } hdc: read_intr: error=0x10 { SectorIdNotFound }, LBAsect=33555007, sector=0 hdc: read_intr: status=0x59 { DriveReady SeekComplete DataRequest Error } hdc: read_intr: error=0x10 { SectorIdNotFound }, LBAsect=33555007, sector=0 hdc: read_intr: status=0x59 { DriveReady SeekComplete DataRequest Error } hdc: read_intr: error=0x10 { SectorIdNotFound }, LBAsect=33555007, sector=0 ide1: reset: success hdc: read_intr: status=0x59 { DriveReady SeekComplete DataRequest Error } hdc: read_intr: error=0x10 { SectorIdNotFound }, LBAsect=33555007, sector=0 end_request: I/O error, dev 16:01 (hdc), sector 0 FAT: unable to read boot sector Any way to fix? What data recovery software would you suggest?

I haven't used any of these myself but others have recommended them: File scavenger Getdataback Here is a list of free software that may be useful, but IMO its best to pay for software in a case like this: http://www.freebyte.com/filediskutils/#datarecovery scroll to "Free Data Recovery Tools" TestDisk looks quite good although i haven't used it myself. Try to avoid performing any action that writes to the disk until you've got your data back.

Well, the only tool that seemed to do anything was Testdisk. File scavenger must be run under NT, and GetDataBack locked up my system. Before I tried any of the recovery tools, I booted into Linux and tried the old style 'dd' recovery: dd if=/dev/hdc1 of=/dev/hda4 conv=noerror,sync but this just produced a continual barrage or Input/output errors. However, when I booted back into Win98, Norton protection recognized the E:\ drive although it was not accessible. It also now appears in My Computer and Explorer. After figuring out how Testdisk worked I ran a analysis on the bad drive. This is the log: Disk 82 - 10056 MB / 9590 MiB Partition table type: Intel Computes LBA from CHS for Disk 82 - 10056 MB / 9590 MiB - CHS 1222 255 63 Analyse Disk 82 - 10056 MB / 9590 MiB - CHS 1222 255 63 Geometry from i386 MBR: head=251 sector=63 BAD_RS LBA=33555007 32319 check_FAT: Read error check_part_i386 failed for partition type 0C Current partition structure: check_FAT: Read error 1 P FAT32 LBA 2088 179 11 5398 76 59 53168710 1 P FAT32 LBA 2088 179 11 5398 76 59 53168710 Bad relative sector. No partition is bootable search_part() Disk 82 - 10056 MB / 9590 MiB - CHS 1223 255 63 disk_read lba=63(0/1/1) nbr_sector=16, rc=10 bad sector detected (hard disk) Results interface_write() No partition found or selected for recovery simulate write! write_mbr_i386: starting... write_all_log_i386: starting... No extended partition TestDisk exited normally. Obviously, there is no partition table and the FAT seems unreadable. However, I decided to try PTSDE a low level Disk Editor like the old Norton Utilities disk editor. It shows data on the drive but odd entries in the PT (Xenix file system). This low level read tells me that there is nothing physically wrong with the disk, so the logical formatting is what is screwed up. However, nothing I have tried has enabled a repair or recovery. Any further suggestions?

Im not a expert on linux. Did you say the drive has a Xenix file system (xenix?) This probably wont work but norton ghost can usually grab the data off the drive depending on how bad it is. its a bit like dd. I haven't seen this in a long time but prehaps the drive was set to LARGE instead of LBA in the bios (or USB converter). I have heard good things about File scavenger so if youve got a version of NT around i would go that route. I dont know how testdisk works but it may be able to copy the data off the drive (with errors) to an image then repair the image. you could run file scavenger under wine but this sounds like a really bad idea.

Tried to use a WIN2K system and File Scavenger to restore info. However, another problem arose. Connected the Travelstar to the secondary IDE channel and then the machine wouldn't boot from the C: drive. Seems the disk drive's not getting any power. Reattached the CDROM to the secondary IDE and rebooted; same problem. Power supply seems OK since I am getting power to the floppy disk and can boot with a WIN98 boot disk. However, when I run FDISK it says no hard drives detected. Don't know what happened. I think I'll just abandon the recovery for awhile and try to figure out this latest problem. Any suggestions?