foale

The caddy will do more or less the same thing but it is really intended to be used as a regular external drive.

If you want to just mount a disk for repair or cloning then us have to take it apart and insert the disk. Most units will only take one sort of disk. With a cable adaptor you just plug the cable in and leave the disk on the desk. They will also cate for 3 different drives SATA - Standard IDE Notebook IDE.

Another SATA problem... any ideas?

A couple of days ago I used XP disk management to add my SATA disk, formatted as NTFS. It worked fine. I copied a load of files onto it. They copied successfully. When I restarted my PC the next day, chkdsk ran on the SATA disk and now windows won't let me access the files on it saying "the device is not ready". I suspect the data is fine on there, but the drive index (is there such a thing?) has corrupted. chkdsk said something about a system volume information problem.

How do I get the data off the disk?

VM

Can you give a bit more info?

Why did chkdsk run?
Did the coputer shut down normally?
Can you see the drive in device manager and disk manager?

chkdsk just ran during startup of the PC saying it had noticed some inconsistencies (or something along those lines). Everything shut down normally.

I can see the disk and even the folders in windows explorer, but when I try to view the individual files in those folders, it says "the device is not ready".

I can't see the disk in disk manager, but can in device manager.

Also, Windows occasionally complains that it was unable to write to the s:\$Mft file (s is my sata drive letter). Whether this is the cause of my problem or a symptom, I'm not sure.

One thing that occurs to me, have you got Win XP SP2 installed? Pre SP2 systems will not work with large hard drives.

If you can't see it in Disk Manager, then that is your problem. Start by removing the drive, reboot and check that Disk Manager can see only what is installed.

Then shutdown, reconnect the disk and run Disk Manager again. If you can get to the stage of being able to see the disk again, try running chkdsk /f to check everything.

However, if I had a new disk that had played up like that, at the very least I would reformat it and start again and I may run a nuke program to erase it and send it back.

I know that the only types of disk are ones that have failed and ones that haven't failed yet, but the former are not worth havig.

Hopefully this will work too

Got very distracted today...back on case re HD tomorrow...

Optimist..agree yours the way to go...

foale

That one is not as good because it doesn't do SATA drives

Thanks for the assistance.

A bit of progress from my fiddling around... the disk now shows in explorer and i can navigate around *most* of it. It also shows as healthy in disk management.

But... while I've managed to grab 90% of my data off the disk, there are still some folders which cannot be opened. I get the error: "the file or directory is corrupted and unreadable".

Opt,

Got that Samsung Q1 Ultra.

Bought it from the guys in Battersea who sold me my Asus - and who deserve the business as the Asus has proved splendid.

Interesting that it does not come with an external CD drive but instead with a USB Data Cable. On the cable is a big bulge that must contain the software for Superlink.exe. This is a type of remote explorer that enables you to see the Samsung drives on my Asus and vice versa. It's a good way to transfer third party source software.

However, it does not seem to do anything other than copy and paste and I guess that if I can get that Remote Control to work between the two machines I'll be able to install the software on the Samsung using the keyboard and mouse on the Asus.

Can I do that by simply connecting the two machines with a normal USB cable? Or do I need some other form of link?

TP

Since a recent firefox update, 2.0.0.8 on my laptop Java (6u3) runs fine on my windows 2000 computer; but on Vista ultimate 32 laptop does not work on firefox.

I've checked Java enabled in firefox is fine, but when I visit Java-tester it is 'not there' in firefox, yet my computer insists all is fine.

I went to 'geek' site and uninstalled then reinstalled Java offline. Still no joy.

Wits end, spent hours over last week going round in circles, especially at Java FAQ site, which keeps taking me back over same ground!

Anyone????

VM

Have you got a copy of the other data that you can't access?

If you have then I would suggest formatting the disk and starting again or even nuking it and sending it back as it will be difficult to have faith in it.

If you need the data, then there are programs that will try to recover the data but they are time consuming and complicated. I bought one a couple of years ago for 30 and recovered someones C: Drive that had been formatted. Most good recovery programs can also take an image of the disk so that you can work on the image without further wearing out a failing drive, but you need massive amounts of disk space.

What is chkdsk reporting? You could try running it again or you could boot into the recovery console and run chkdsk from there. The recovery console seems to have a better version of chkdsk and the syntax is different so run it first with the /? option. Microsoft have a good article to start with here. Be careful it has the potential to do serious damage.

TP

A number of points:-

First, go and buy yourself a USB keyboard, mouse and possibly an LCD monitor to plug into your Q1. This will make it much easier to operate and setup.

To network the two machines together, you could use a USB cable but I've never done it and I believe it is more complicated than ethernet. A better way is to use a standard RJ45 network cable (you will probably need a crossover one but if you have a standard one it may work so try it) or WiFi. The RJ 45 cable is best for transfering large files.

If you are setting up a peer to peer network connection, don't let the wizard install a DHCP server on either machine. set the ip addresses manually it will be far less trouble in the long run. If you already have an ADSL router, then just plug both machines into that and they should see each other.

Once you have them both on the same network you can share the disks between them. To use remote desktop, on your Q1 right click on My Computer, select properties then the remote tab. You can sort the rest.

On your Laptop click Start Button. programs, accessories, Remote desktop connection. You set the colour depth, and other options, for the connection on the client machine. The deffault maximum colour depth is 16bit. For photography, you will need 24 bit and this is set in the registry of the server machine. Try a search in the RD help for 24 bit colour.

Thanks Opt,

I'm starting with the keyboard option. I have one in my desk drawer.

I'll report on progress - or lack, as the day progresses.

Yes I have an ADSL router. I'll see what I can do with that. I've also got some of those Devolo homeplug devices. Maybe that's an option.

TP

Optimist,

The sata disk was going to be my backup while I reformatted my main disk and installed Linux. When it failed, it was my only copy of the data.

Fortunately, I'd recently synced about 80% of the files (photos) to my wife's laptop. Another 15% I've got back by scanning my main disk for the old deleted copies. I got another 2% back from my online backup service, carbonite. The remaining 3% I was not able to recover.

To compound matters, the 3% were exclusively from my honeymoon photos folder! Sods law it would be that one - why couldn't it be some photos I don't care about?

For some unknown reason, I've never copied over the camera card which held my honeymoon photos. I've been using another camera since then. Its a pain trying to work out which ones are missing and renaming them to meaningful filenames, but thank goodness they are not lost forever. The task for the rest of today is to sort out those missing files and then BACK UP EVERYTHING!

Thanks for your help.

ps. the hard disk is heading for the bin!

VM

If the data is that important them it should be worth running a recovery program on. It may also be worth running a recovery program on your other drive. If you want to do this, stop using it NOW!!.

Executive software do a program called undelete which may well be able to get the deleted files off the old disk unless youve already formatted it in which case you need a program such as the one I described earlier. ither way, you will have to mount both disks on another machine.

I'm concerned at how little data you could recover from Carbonite. Why was this? I have 100GB backed up with them but have never had to recover data from them.

I guess that you know this now, but for the benefit of others:-

Never trust your data to one or even two discs or locations.
If you buy a new hard drive for a machine, just clone your old disk and put it away as backup.
If you must reuse an old disk, give the new one a few weeks to settle in first.

Let me know if you want to try recovery.

Edit
If you really bin the new disk, nuke it first.

I have about 10GB of data backed up on Carbonite. It was just that it was quicker for me to grab the files off my wife's laptop than to wait for them to download from there. I could have downloaded the whole 10GB if I had the time. I only needed to download the ones I hadn't synced to the laptop and which I was unable to scrape off the remnants of my sata disk.

Something I noticed when downloading was that Carbonite had not backed up any of my avi movies from the photo folders, just the jpegs - maybe worth checking to make sure yours are backed up. Fortunately I recovered all of these using the undelete program.

The carbonite backup of my honeymoon pics was missing - I suspect it got removed when I changed the folder name a few weeks ago.

The problem with the sata disk seems to be that the MFT is screwed. Chkdsk fails to fix it using the mirror MFT. I think the files themselves are actually OK in there.

I'll try running a recovery program against it overnight to see what it comes up with.

And the drive will be getting a nice fat nail through it before it goes in the bin.

VM

Carbonite doesn't back AVI files up by deffault but you can change that.

I think there is a fix MFT routine in the recovery console. What recovery program are you using?

Edit

I've just had a closer look at Carbonite, it seems that you can get it to backup video files but only on an individual file or per directory basis (not including subdiectories). I think there is a 2GB single file limit as well.

I used undelete_plus on my c:drive to recover those i'd deleted from there. On the sata disk, undelete won't work because the mft is not there.

Any suggestions for a good recovery program?

VM

I have used Actice Undelete. You may be able to use the trial version to see what it can see on the disk but I think you will have to pay if you want to use it.

Struggling to connect a windows 2000 laptop to my router via a wired connection. Not too worried about a network setup, just want to update win 2000 then pass my laptop on tot a relative for internet access.

I'm in network and dial up connections, and all I can see is "Make new connection " and "Tiscali 2" which was the dial up connection I used to use. Clicking on make a new connection brings up a menu with
Dial up to private network
Dial up to the internet
Connect to a private network through the internet
Accept incoming connections
Connect directly to another computer.

I'm struggling to work this out. Any help?

Edit, I might just be getting somewhere. The laptop doesn't seem to be recognising its network adapter, trying a fix now

Edit 2. Not getting anywhere at all.

Edit 3. Will bring the OS disc home from work tomorrow and see if that helps.