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

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

After months of procrastinating I finally pulled out three old hard drives that I used with my Amiga's circa mid-1990s.  Surprisingly enough one of them was detected right away and I was able to recover data off it.  The other two spin up and make the normal "happy hard drive" sounds, but don't show up on Workbench and HDToolbox can't detect them.  I've already tried different cables and jumper settings so can rule those out as issues.  I tried running DiskSalv but it doesn't appear to have any options as far as repairing a hard drive that's not already mounted within the system?

Ideas - is there any software that can scan for a hard drive attached to the system if it won't show up in HDToolbox?  I've heard of something called "Quarterback Tools", I think it is?

I might also consider replacing the control board on the drives, looks like I can get these off ebay for around $10 each.  Probably a PITA to replace, however, but not a major investment if it doesn't work.

Not much on these drives besides my artwork and music from back then, would be nice to have but probably not worth sending to a data recovery place.  

[Colani1200]

Are these drives SCSI or IDE? Do you remember which type of controller the drives were connected to back then?

[DutchinUSA]

If you can .. hook them up to your pc and make an image of the drive first before you start, I use WinIMAGE and that works great

[GadgetUK]

If you can .. hook them up to your pc and make an image of the drive first before you start, I use WinIMAGE and that works great

That's a good idea, it will also prove whether there are any hardware problems with the drive.  If you manage to make an image of the drive without issue its likely the data could be retrieved with the right tools.

[Thomas]

Given that jumpers are set correctly, cables are connected properly, the power supply is strong enough and HDToolbox is configured correctly, then if HDtoolbox does not show the drive, no other software will show it, too.

If the drives are IDE they might suffer from the "slow spin up" problem and might be seen after a reboot. They might also show up if you run a software like IDEfix which reinitializes the IDE bus.

For SCSI, if you have a SCSI controller from Phase5 you can use the UnitControl program to rescan the bus for drives which were not recognised on power-on.

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Are these drives SCSI or IDE? Do you remember which type of controller the drives were connected to back then?

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!  

[nicholas]

This might help.

http://gareth.halfacree.co.uk/2013/03/mounting-amiga-ffs-hard-drives-under-linux

[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

[Matt_H]

I recently prepped a brand new (blank) CF card on my A4000's built-in IDE controller. HDToolbox could not detect it. I eventually got it working by polling the bus with SCSIMounter and HDInstTools.

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Hummm... no luck yet.  HDInstTools gets a little further than HDToolbox and was able to correctly identify one of the drives (the other drive doesn't show up at all in either application), but no partition table shows up and attempting to make any changes to the drive at all results in an error message.

I also remembered I had an ancient IDE-to-USB external chassis, threw one of the drives in there but Windows was unable to detect it (in the Computer Management -> Disk Management console), either.  The interface itself showed up, but with no drive attached.

As a last option I downloaded WinUAE, but I'm so used to doing things on a real Amiga I have no idea how to try to mount a hard drive in that application, LOL.    Regardless, I suspect if the PC can't detect the drive, WinUAE wouldn't see anything either.

May try replacing the controller boards, or poking around at a few other solutions.  Not a high priority.  It's waited this long, a little longer won't kill me, haha.  

[glitch]

Which drive is dead - the Seagate or the Western Digital?