Tom's Guide | Tom's Hardware | Tom's Games
 |
 |
 |
My laptop died last week when I spilt water all over it. The harddrive was not effected and stayed completely dry.
I am basically trying to save the data on the harddrive and completely wipe/format it.
I bought a 2.5" SATA > USB enclosure/caddy and put my laptop HDD into the enclosure. When I plugged the enclosure into my spare PC using the power/USB Y cable, a message came up on the PC saying "New hardware found; USB mass storage device". Then about 1 minute later it came up with the following message;
http://i38.tinypic.com/2a8qmhd.jpgThe HDD is not showing up in My computer or disk management, but it does show up in Device manager under USB controllers as a USB mass storage device. However, it seems to disappear from the device manager after about 1 minute.
Does anyone know why the HDD enclosure is not showing up in my computer or disk management?
Might need to install a driver for the device. Search the Device manufacturer website and look for a driver for that particular device.
Justin Farrell
0 
According to the manual it only needs a driver for Windows 98. It does come with a CD including a Win 98 driver.
Apparently 2000/XP/Vista does not need a driver.
0
The drive could be dead. Although water might not have entered the drive, it could have been damaged by water on the motherboard circuits leading to the drive.
I have seen the symptoms you described more than once, and they were because the drive was dead. But the problem could also be caused by a defective power cable/connector. Try another one if you have a spare.
0
Wait a minute - is the HD from the notebook SATA? Also alot of times generic USB enclosure fail to work for one reason or the other. I could never figure it out but I had to return two of them before the third one would work.
i_Xp/VistaUser
0
I did wonder if the drive could be dead but it definitely does power up OK. I can feel and hear it power up when I pluged the enclosure in.
Yes, the HDD from the laptop is SATA.
It's a Hitachi 100GB 7200RPM SATA drive from a Dell Inspiron 9400 laptop (the one that is dead).If I can't get it working soon I might return the enclosure and try another.
I am interested to know why it comes up with that "A problem occurred during hardware installation" message. Would a dead HDD cause Windows to display that message?
That's why I believe it could be a faulty enclosure or a Windows XP problem.Thanks
0
Normally it's a hardware issue - nothing wrong with Windows. Windows just cannot recognize it.
Was the laptop operating when you spilled water all over it? If so I tend to agree with aegis in response number 3. Do you have another PC around? If so connect the external drive to it and see what happens. If the same error message appear, it's either a bad external HD enclosure or your HD is fried.
i_Xp/VistaUser
0
Your specs in the original post indicate you have a desktop computer in addition to the laptop.
Does the desktop have SATA ports?
If so, connect the laptop drive directly to a SATA port and see what happens.
You can then run a diagnostic test on the drive. Get the test program from the manufacturer of the drive.
Connecting the drie internally is a better solution than an external connection. Especially a 2.5" enclosure, which doen't have an external power source.
0
The laptop was on when I spilt the water on it.
I contacted the supplier of the enclosure and he said it sounds like a faulty PCB board and he is sending me a new one to try out.
The desktop PC is currently using an IDE HDD but the motherboard does support SATA.
I didn't realise it was possible to connect a 2.5" SATA laptop drive to a PC...
How do I do it exactly? Just buy a SATA cable and connect it up?Cheers.
0
The connections for SATA drives are all the same. IDE are different. If you have SATA ports you should have the proper power connection leads off the PSU. If not, then you may need to get a power adapter to go from Molex to SATA. You also need a SATA data cable.
Be sure to Enable the SATA controller in the BIOS.
0
Thanks.
I am now 95% sure the HDD is dead. :(
I found a SATA data cable in my motherboard box and plugged the drive into the PSU, etc.
Nothing showed up at all, not in the BIOS or Windows. The SATA controller is definitely enabled in the BIOS.I then tried out my brothers work laptop HDD (also SATA) in the PC using the same method and it worked fine. It showed up in the BIOS and Windows.
I then put my HDD into his laptop and it didn't detect it at all.
Thanks for your help anyway. :(
0  |
 windows xp installation p...
|
bubble messages and scrat...
|
This post is quite old and has been locked from receiving new replies. Please create a new posting instead.
| Ads by Google |
