Mystery Hard Disk - What's your mystery of the week?

My house is a little odd. It's a self build that my family did ourselves, so it's got a few unusual features. One is that in order to maximize the amount of storage that we have we put access panels on most of the sections of crawlspace so that they could be easily used for putting things in.

Anyway, I was looking for something in one of these sections of these sections and I found an external hard disk caddy that I absolutely don't remember owning, and it contained a mystery hard disk that I A) Don't remember owning and B) Don't remember putting there.

What makes it even stranger is that it was one of those old solid state 2.5" discs that you used to get in laptops before SSD became standard.

I tried connecting the caddy up and while it lit up it wouldn't mount. I couldn't even get my computer to recognize that there was a caddy attached, let along getting it to read the disc.

I took everything apart, put it back together again, and nothing.

I'm pretty good with computers so this thing is either busted or was set up not to read on a standard computer (I obviously don't remember setting it up like that, since I don't remember owning it).

I got bored pretty quickly so whatever is on that disc remains a mystery, as does the reason why I stashed it away in the crawlspace.

It's almost certainly mine as nobody else in my house is into technology and wouldn't have a 2.5" caddy or even know how to fit a disc into one. Let alone stash it where it was. But it's still odd.

That's my weird story for the week.

What's yours?

a reply to: AaarghZombies
- You could buy a second external hard drive case and try it with that one. Maybe the electronics for translating it to USB is damaged, or stick it into your computer if the plugs are there.

- Maybe you need a software to install the USB case.

- Have you checked if the USB cable can do communication? Some only can do power. I have an usb cable for my phone that only does this, only charging, no transfer.



No mysteries here from me.

a reply to: AaarghZombies

What makes it even stranger is that it was one of those old solid state 2.5" discs that you used to get in laptops before SSD became standard.

A "SSD" IS a "solid state" drive. That's what SSD stands for..."Solid State Drive".

Typo??

originally posted by: Flyingclaydisk
A "SSD" IS a "solid state" drive. That's what SSD stands for..."Solid State Drive".

Typo??

He was probably thinking of the newer and smaller M.2 drives.

a reply to: AaarghZombies

Does whatever you are using to read it understand FAT32? Is it old enough to be formatted in FAT32?

I haven't really worked with newer OS incarnations, but I seem to recall some issues with FAT32 once NTFS took over. Do they still use it and do current OS read it?

I seem to recall the first SSD drives experiencing data loss over time too. Something with fairly low rewritability?

Not positive on any of this. It's been a long time.

There's an old utility disk that could be found under the name Hiren's boot disk, maybe Hirin's. Lots of tools and may have something helpful, it has a lot of what are probably now obscure utilities. It was freeware I believe. Partition magic and another drive utility were on it.

Might be Apple.

No one knows how that S# works...not even Apple!! J/k.

originally posted by: trollz

originally posted by: Flyingclaydisk
A "SSD" IS a "solid state" drive. That's what SSD stands for..."Solid State Drive".

Typo??

He was probably thinking of the newer and smaller M.2 drives.

Nah, It was just a mistake. I was thinking faster than I was typing, so I wrote the wrong thing.

The disc that I found was an old fashioned 2.5" mechanicalmagnetic hard disc, rather than one of the new 2.5" solid solid state discs.

originally posted by: Flyingclaydisk
Might be Apple.

No one knows how that S# works...not even Apple!! J/k.

I suspect that it might be EXT4 rather than FATNTFS. I used to have a Linux based media player and this could possibly be the disc for it. In which case it's just a bunch of movies and music that I would have ripped to the disc.

My PC used to have an EXT4 driver on it, but I removed it a while back when I was troubleshooting something else.

I may have put the disc in a caddy so that I could transfer it to my new media player.

Might as well share my husband's synchronicity this week. He was listening to The Prodigy [Poison] on the computer at home and imagined himself driving around like we used to. Actually it was that song that made him want to go out and drive in the first place.
Therefore he decided to sort the car out and drive it a bit [new battery, pumping up tyres etc]. He has an usb stick with more than 3000 different songs and bands in the car.
He put it in and guess which song was first?
Yup. The Prodigy, Poison.

Chances are incredibly slim, there is no link with the home computer [stick was made weeks before] and the car is on shuffle and they are all singles, no albums and vary greatly. I have been in the car with him most of the times and it has never started with this song ever.
I thought it was a nice synchronicity, almost as if the Universe agreed with him.

a reply to: Ksihkehe

I think that Windows still uses FAT32 because it's the common format for flash sticks.

a reply to: AaarghZombies

Older magnetic platter discs are still common and definitely still available, they have fell out of our favour with gamers and video editors for direct work but are still used for storage due to there larger capacity's and reliability as back up and storage devices.

USB port's slow even those down though.

Now if you have an older IDE interface or even older there are specialist cards you can buy and install to allow you to access the content of such devices, failure in those usually starts as damages sectors and builds over time as the platter or the head suffer damage usually through knocking them or just general wear and tear as with other electromechanical devices they wear out.

M2 is currently the fastest standard and most NEW motherboards have at least one M.2. slot, these type look just like a tiny add in card with the connection on one end rather than a hard disc while the slightly older SSD's are usually enclosed in a scaled down hard disc housing and use the older Serial ATA connection (now but it is not really that old think how long the older formats lasted), I still remember being envious of people with SCSI in there home PC back when mine were the IDE since they could do a lot of things IDE could not.

Accessing old data can be tricky and depends on a number of factors, why did you remove the disc?, you don't remember so?, is the disc INFECTED? (you can always run a virus and malware scan though with those older mechanical hard drives takes ages so go away for a day or two depending on it's capacity or if connecting it through USB make that a week?, did it fail?.

But you kept it for a reason so maybe it is something like old game saves, family album pictures, movies or other data that had meaning to you, I have three or four in my drawer I should have chucked ages ago but one had a very heavily modded Morrowind install (yes that old) and I just don't want to throw it since I was a serial downloader and must have had at least two thirds of the back catalogue of mod's from the old Morrowind Nexus on that same hard drive as well as many of my own mod's that I created for the game and personal edits and fix's for mod's that otherwise were broken or did not play nicely with other mod's when I downloaded them that I fixed to get along nicely, mod's that no longer exist for a game that has dated like thousand year old milk so really it's a museum piece and old IDE tech.

Given it has sat there for a while it is also checking by eye that all the connections are still in place in the caddy and take it apart and put back together.

Good luck with this.

I even have some old 3.5 inch floppy's but obviously nothing to check there content's on?.

originally posted by: LABTECH767
a reply to: AaarghZombies

Older magnetic platter discs are still common and definitely still available, they have fell out of our favour with gamers and video editors for direct work but are still used for storage due to there larger capacity's and reliability as back up and storage devices.

It's a standard 2.5" mechanical disc, the kind that you get in older model laptops. S-ATA interface. I already checked the connections.

I think that it's probably just an EXT4 disc from an old Linus based media player.

a reply to: AaarghZombies

I never liked laptop's, had one and found it's performance underwhelming so have stuck to desktop PC's myself, however if you have a desktop and if the HD is still in working order you could always look to hooking if up internally if you have any space SATA connections on your main board and a cable lying around, some added storage is always handy to have and a 2.5 should not draw too much added power to your system though they are often not as high performance as the leading desktop 3.5 variation of there production date though this is simply down to the mechanical nature as the outer sectors on 3.5 are moving, reading and writing faster than those on a 2.5 inch disc.

Either way it's the temptation to see if there is anything on it, virus scan it first if that is possible and if your OS can read the format it is set to use.

If you have a Linus USB stick based OS it should allow you to poke around in just about anything as well.
youtu.be...

The only reason I still use Windows is my software catalogue, that and laziness Linux is getting better and better these days and even for a gamer like me there are utility's such as Wine which as come a long day in emulating window's for games since it's early day's.

a reply to: AaarghZombies

You didn't plug a SATA cord in to SEE what's on/in the drive?

Doesn't need to work.

originally posted by: AaarghZombies

originally posted by: LABTECH767
a reply to: AaarghZombies

Older magnetic platter discs are still common and definitely still available, they have fell out of our favour with gamers and video editors for direct work but are still used for storage due to there larger capacity's and reliability as back up and storage devices.

It's a standard 2.5" mechanical disc, the kind that you get in older model laptops. S-ATA interface. I already checked the connections.

I think that it's probably just an EXT4 disc from an old Linus based media player.

I've been using 2.5 HDs for storage for the past 15 years. I bought the empty cases and put in my own hard drives. Setup as Fat32, I haven't had issues reading them on any version of Windows (from 98 to Win10).

However, sometimes I have encountered problems mounting the drives. The issue is power. My drives don't have an AC adapter port and the PCs USB port can sometimes not provide enough power. The drive's LED comes on, it clicks, hisses and splutters, it spins up and then dies, but it isn't recognised by the O.S.. The solution was to use the supplied usb cable that has a secondary usb cable coming off the main cable... like a two-headed snake. By plugging in both usb jacks, enough power is fed to the drive.

If power is not the problem, then I believe you answered your own question when you mentioned it possibly has an EXT4 file system. As mentioned by others, any Live Linux distro should allow you to peruse the drive.

I may not have any computer courses under my belt and it looks like others have answered for what format it might be if not recognized.

But I thought FAT32 was fairly universal? I remember having to reformat some externals to FAT32 to transfer stuff to a friends computer, was going from Windows to Mac.

And it may have already been figured out, but maybe the disc is scratched and can't be read? Is there clicking or any sound at all once booted?

Edit: I feel like olderish laptops had a fairly common issue of hard drives getting scratched from being jostled around while running. I'm not entirely sure how old it is, but maybe that was why it was removed/replaced?

Or maybe you're like me and just have a room filled with computer parts to tinker with from decades of collecting.

Little off topic, but I got a hard drive I'm worried might have crashed.

It still vibrates while the PC is on, so its recieving power but nothing in the BIOS as if its connected, it was running until an update reset the PC.

I'm wondering if it's the SATA connection on the motherboard and nothing to do with the hard drive.

I know, fairly plain, but that's all I got with hard drive mystery.

If you want to just hook it up and see what is on it you could try this.

Ebay

Chances are it's a laptop drive from 2008 or earlier though. You could find Windows Me or 98 even on it. Especially if it's smaller than 40 GB