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Serapth
02-10-2010, 11:42 AM
Ok, so my Win 7 desktop machine went kaboom a few months back and I decided to say screw desktops and replaced it with a laptop.

This, has caused a small problem. Now I am trying to get data off the old drive and ick. I have a SATA/IDE to USB2 cable and I think I have run into a giant snag. I can't see the drives and its seeming like USB enclosures cant work with multiple partitions! EEK.

So, thats the catch... the drive is formated like [100MB Win 7 mystery partition] [256GB apps/os] [256 GB data].

When I plug it in, it finds a 100MB drive and tells me it needs to be formatted before use. It then finds the two other partitions, tells me they have to be formatted as well, then gets into a loop of finding those partitions again and again until I unplug the drive. ( Win 7 bug im figuring ).



So, how the hell do I get information of a partitioned external SATA drive and onto my laptop? Im guessing if I buy a different USB drive enclosure I am going to run into a similar problem. I also think if I was running linux, I could manually mount each one at a time, but have found no such option in Windows.
Serapth
02-10-2010, 11:45 AM
Oh, and laptop has an eSata port. Sata and eSata are apparently not the same cables, eh?
nabokovfan87
02-10-2010, 11:58 AM
tell it not to format, then:

control panel> administrative tools > computer management > disk management, go to the drive/partition, right click, and assign a drive letter.
Serapth
02-10-2010, 11:59 AM
tell it not to format, then:

control panel> administrative tools > computer management > disk management, go to the drive/partition, right click, and assign a drive letter.

They don't show up. :(
biosc1
02-10-2010, 05:41 PM
Multiple partitions do work on USB drives...just appears like you've run into a weird issue.

Try Windows XP mode or a Linux live CD to get the files off.
nabokovfan87
02-10-2010, 07:02 PM
They don't show up. :(

make sure plug n play os is turned on in the bios, they should be there w/o a drive letter, so you would have to scroll down and it would just saying something like "generic volume"
benson
02-11-2010, 10:10 AM
Yeah, what nabaokovfan87 said. The drive should show up as another disk no matter what.

What file system are the partitions? I would guess NTFS since you said it was Windows 7, but just checking as that can be an issue. Windows can only mount certain file systems as a drive letter, though it can see others.