Possible to recover data from hard drive that doesn't show up in HDToolbox?

[Honkybear]

They're IDE drives, they were originally hooked up with a 44-to-40 pin adapter cable to my A1200 motherboard IDE, and then later to an ELBOX 4xEIDE'99 interface (I only remember the name because I found it's software on the one working drive, LOL).

I've got them now hooked up to a Tandem IDE controller (http://amiga.resource.cx/exp/tandem) in my A2000, and tried them in all combinations of Master/Slave, including as Slave to the one working drive, but no luck.  My thinking is that even if I'd used some weird format at the time (SFS or PFS or something) that they'd still at least register within HDToolbox (and show up as blank or whatever), correct?

I'm using the "Oktapussy" driver off Aminet (http://aminet.net/package/disk/misc/oktapus) which doesn't scan the IDE bus until you initialize it (either by putting the software in Expansion directory or running it manually), so I know the drives are well spun-up by the time the bus is scanned.  One of them even makes a slight sound when I start the driver, so I know it's doing "something", LOL.  

Good call on making an image first, will have to try to find a PC that still has an IDE port, and then cross my fingers that it detects the drive.  Thanks!  

Even if you don't have IDE I bought one of these a great investment less than $10- Hope this helps.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/USB-2-0-to-IDE-SATA-S-ATA-2-5-3-5-HD-HDD-Adapter-Cable-/200657010707?pt=US_Drive_Cables_dapters&hash=item2eb8170013