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Partitioned hard drive inside external enclosure

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kaptlid

Technical User
Nov 26, 2006
86
US
My friend's old laptop went kaput [as in doesn't turn on at all] and she asked me to backup the data on it. The hard drive has winxp installed on it, ntfs with two partitions.
Put the hard drive [IDE 2.5 inch] into an external USB enclosure.
Hooked it up to both a winxp pro s3 computer and a vista home premium computer. It only shows one partition. [Friend said alot of data is missing even though the disk is about 80% full.] Do I need additional software to view the second partition?

The enclosure came with no additional software. Disk management software in the xp and vista didn't show any unmounted hard drives....
 
What does Disk Management say about the second partition?

It should show up in the drive entry there either as healthy or empty or something.

Also are you sure its not showing up? Do you not get additional drive letters in My Computer?

If the pc went kaput, it may have damaged the drive along with it, or the damaged drive is what caused the pc to die.

Try the trial version of getdataback for NTFS from runtime.org see if it can pick up the other partition and its contents?

----------------------------------
Phil AKA Vacunita
----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

Behind the Web, Tips and Tricks for Web Development.
 
Also are you sure its not showing up? Do you not get additional drive letters in My Computer?

No. My Computer only shows one drive.

What does Disk Management say about the second partition?

Doesn't exist. The drive is shown as one partition.

The laptop doesn't physically turn on at all.
 
Disk Management should tell you the full size of the hard disk. It will also tell you if some of the space on that disk is unused, or not partitioned. This is what you're looking for.

Does the partition that you CAN see have a drive letter allocated? If yes, are the files and folders on that drive accessible? Is it NTFS?

ROGER - G0AOZ.
 
You still haven't told us what disk management shows.

It can't simply not show anything about it. Perhaps if you took a screen shot of Disk Management it would help us help you.

Have you tried out the software I suggested?

Also is it at all possible it wasn't 2 partitions but actually 2 drives?
Its not common for laptops to have more than one drive but its possible nonetheless.

----------------------------------
Phil AKA Vacunita
----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

Behind the Web, Tips and Tricks for Web Development.
 
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