Holadem
Senior HTF Member
- Joined
- Nov 4, 2000
- Messages
- 8,967
A 60GB thing which used to be in a Tosh laptop bought some 2 years ago. It went kaput pretty much without warning. My friend, who the thing belongs to, called a "computer specialist" who basically replaced the HD and was unable to restore anything on the old one.
Now the stuff the computer guy gave back (the old drive) looks rather... sleek. More like a very thin external HD than a regular drive. For all I know, perhaps all laptop HDs look like that.. no idea. It's got "Coolmax" written on it, and no part numbers. A google search revealed that Coolmax makes both HDs and HD enclosures. I am thinking it's HD + Enclosure, since it only has a USB port (and a USB port wouldn't be used inside the laptop, right? Sorry, it's probably a stoOOopid question).
Anyway, I plugged the thing into my PC, ran "Recover My Files" and miracle... I was able to recover all the 1700 JPEGs on that disk, most of them in good condition. (BTW, RMF is the shit!)
Following that success, I though eh... I might be able to salvage this thing, I could use the extra storage... but while I can recover tons of files (word, excell, mp3 etc...), the damn thing won't format using right click --> "format...". Even running disk manager doesn't do it, it starts well enough, but when I come back a couple of hours later, there is an error message saying it couldn't do it. Arrrgh.
The size of the device doesn't showp up in Windows Explorer. There is a drive letter, and that's it. Of course, it can't be accessed.
I hate to throw out such a purty looking device, is there any software out to get reticent hard drives back in line?
Thx!
--
H
Now the stuff the computer guy gave back (the old drive) looks rather... sleek. More like a very thin external HD than a regular drive. For all I know, perhaps all laptop HDs look like that.. no idea. It's got "Coolmax" written on it, and no part numbers. A google search revealed that Coolmax makes both HDs and HD enclosures. I am thinking it's HD + Enclosure, since it only has a USB port (and a USB port wouldn't be used inside the laptop, right? Sorry, it's probably a stoOOopid question).
Anyway, I plugged the thing into my PC, ran "Recover My Files" and miracle... I was able to recover all the 1700 JPEGs on that disk, most of them in good condition. (BTW, RMF is the shit!)
Following that success, I though eh... I might be able to salvage this thing, I could use the extra storage... but while I can recover tons of files (word, excell, mp3 etc...), the damn thing won't format using right click --> "format...". Even running disk manager doesn't do it, it starts well enough, but when I come back a couple of hours later, there is an error message saying it couldn't do it. Arrrgh.
The size of the device doesn't showp up in Windows Explorer. There is a drive letter, and that's it. Of course, it can't be accessed.
I hate to throw out such a purty looking device, is there any software out to get reticent hard drives back in line?
Thx!
--
H