Hard Drive Help

[Crazybob]

Had a relatives box go down. Looks to be HD related. I can get my box to recognize his HD when attached, but the odd thing is it shows 2 partitions with only a couple of files on the small sector and the large sector of about 990 GB, shows blank. My guess is a virus, but never seen that before. Is there a free software I can use to try to recover files? He has all his family pictures on the HD and never backed it up. :(

[trigggl]

Had a relatives box go down. Looks to be HD related. I can get my box to recognize his HD when attached, but the odd thing is it shows 2 partitions with only a couple of files on the small sector and the large sector of about 990 GB, shows blank. My guess is a virus, but never seen that before. Is there a free software I can use to try to recover files? He has all his family pictures on the HD and never backed it up. :(

You can try Knoppix STD. It's a Linux livecd with a hard drive forensics app or two. You can find stuff you thought you deleted. If you didn't write over it with something else, it's still there.

EDIT: Also, one thing to note, Windows won't read a Linux partition. If, by chance, your relative runs Linux, Windows may see it as blank. I don't know how Mac hard drives are formatted, but it has a unix based OS, so Windows may not be able to read it either.

[c303a]

If you have at least 1 Western Digital HD you can try Acronis for WD. You can get it http://support.wdc.com/product/downloaddetail.asp?swid=119&wdc_lang=en. I believe it is the same for all the WD hard drives.

[Fire$torm]

I have used Macrium Reflect Free (Here (http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx)) to recover files but you should first use something like what trigggl suggested before exposing your OS to that HDD. Also I believe there are some good online virus/malware scanners that can help. See this article ---> http://charlemont.hubpages.com/hub/Top-Free-Online-Virus-Scan

[Crazybob]

Ran some of the suggestions here with no luck. There was nothing recoverable on the drive. We agreed to reinstall. Here's the kicker. His motherboard will not recognize any SATA devices. I tried about 4 different devices with different cables and different SATA sockets. No IDE connection on board. Went through BIOS pretty thouroughly and didn't see any thing to turn it on or off that was incorrect. Do you think I missed something or is it possible for a Virus to attack the MB? Really making me look dumb about telling my relative that it wouldn't be a problem to fix this.

[Fire$torm]

Ran some of the suggestions here with no luck. There was nothing recoverable on the drive. We agreed to reinstall. Here's the kicker. His motherboard will not recognize any SATA devices. I tried about 4 different devices with different cables and different SATA sockets. No IDE connection on board. Went through BIOS pretty thouroughly and didn't see any thing to turn it on or off that was incorrect. Do you think I missed something or is it possible for a Virus to attack the MB? Really making me look dumb about telling my relative that it wouldn't be a problem to fix this.

No a virus cannot effect your MB. It could be the SATA host controller died. Or you might just need to enable ACHI in the SATA options. Most older boards could run a SATA as an IDE drive. I believe this was done to accommodate Systems installing WinXP without a Floppy drive. Because without a floppy the F6 option to load drivers would not work. So after XP is installed, you would download and install the SATA driver then reboot into CMOS to switch the SATA controller to ACHI.

What is the make a model for that MB?

[Crazybob]

Pegatron MZN7B-LA. never heard of this company. If the SATA host controller died, can it be repaired?

Ooops, guess it's made by ASUS, Doh!

[Fire$torm]

Pegatron MZN7B-LA. never heard of this company. If the SATA host controller died, can it be repaired?

Ooops, guess it's made by ASUS, Doh!

OK from your info I came up with HP Pavilion Elite d5000 desktop. But going through all the users guides for it I cannot find any detail info on configuring the BIOS. So I cannot give specific answers but you should look for a BIOS setting that allows you to change SATA options. Like I mentioned before ACHI is what you need to enable. One other possibility is a RAID option. I once had an Abit board that needed that enabled for my system to see the SATA drive.

BTW, have you tried a different HDD?

Sorry I cannot be of more help :)

F$

Edit: I just noticed in one of my earlier posts I mentioned the wrong program. ooops. It should have been Pandora Recovery (Link (http://www.pandorarecovery.com/)).

[kmanley57]

There can be 'issues' with that motherboard. Do a search and you will find others that had the problem you are seeing.

http://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Desktop-Hardware/system-cannot-see-new-hd-after-replaced-failed-original-hdon/td-p/942197

I have had issues with a different drive on other machines before. :mad:

[Fire$torm]

There can be 'issues' with that motherboard. Do a search and you will find others that had the problem you are seeing.

http://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Desktop-Hardware/system-cannot-see-new-hd-after-replaced-failed-original-hdon/td-p/942197

I have had issues with a different drive on other machines before. :mad:

Though I did not read all the posts from that link, I'm sorry to say that the SATA host controller has failed. The easy fix is to use a PCI or PCIe SATA host controller card.

Here are two examples. If you dig around on the net you might find better cards/prices.

PCI: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815124022

PCIe: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816132008

F$

[Crazybob]

After reading 10 pages of the HP thread and then skipping to the end to see if there was a happy ending, there wasn't. HP really hosed people with this MB. It was discovered that a SATA card add in wouldn't fix the problem. And HP said there wasn't enough complaints to warant a recall. 29 pages of complaints on their web-site and no action or work around. Conclusions were to replace it. Will look at your recomendations and get to ordering. What a piece of crap. Glad I build my own.:mad:

[John P. Myers]

Yep Pegatron is one of the companies that make Asus mobos, and Asus has been supplying HP with mobos for many years. What does Asus actually make themselves that isn't pawned off on one of their partners? Couldn't tell you :p

Last year, HP had 16.9% of the marketshare on pre-built PCs. This year they lost 12.1%
Dell had 12.1% last year. This year they lost 11.5% (wish they had lost 100%. F@&k Dell!)

Lenovo gained 14.9% to 14.7% of marketshare
PCs that actually were branded as an authentic Asus gained 38.6% to 7% of marketshare

Seems ppl are finally starting to realize how garbagely (yes, i made a new word) useless Dell and HP are, though most would agree Dell's are still the worse of the 2 :)

It really is a shame more ppl don't build their own or have them custom built. All the bloated "free" software jammed into the computer you just picked up at Best Buy, slowing down startup and your ability to use it for anything at all, should be all the reason anyone needs :/

[/rant]

Sorry to hear he lost all of those pictures :( He can't be very happy at all about that.

[Crazybob]

I'm looking to replace the MB. Going to look at Gigabyte board. Does anyone have a better idea as to manufacturers?

[c303a]

I have gone to Asus and so far I have only had trouble with the Z67 board. Boards for quad core and core2 dual both running smoothly. I have also just given 2 computers to grandkis with Asus board in them and the boards were both old 775 boards. Older but still perkin away.

[Fire$torm]

I'm looking to replace the MB. Going to look at Gigabyte board. Does anyone have a better idea as to manufacturers?

My Phenom II 810 uses an MSI 870-G45 MB. I am very happy with it. So I can only say good things about MSI, not so with Gigabyte. I've owned 3 Gigabyte MBs. One had a defective design, but that is in regards to the Intel X58 chipset.

[John P. Myers]

Never had a problem with any Gigabyte board and have always gotten perfect results with them. Every Gigabyte board i've ever owned still works today. I also have a box with an MSI Big Bang Marshal board in it. The board itself works just fine, however i was quite pissed when MSI decided they weren't going to update the BIOS on this board to support Ivy Bridge. They lost alot of points with me for that.

Had an old HP with an Asus board in it (of course). Asus refused to admit they had ever made it. Not one shred of data on their website, but i suppose it's that way with every Asus OEM board. Either way, between Gigabyte and MSI, Asus is the only brand of board i've ever sent to the landfill, though MSI made me angry enough to want to send them there as well :p