Problem with external hard drive

Hi there i'm wondering if anyone can help me? basically my hard drive o
my old pc stopped working so i bought a hard drive enclosure to try an
turn it into an external and salvage my files, however when i connec
this to my laptop it is recognised as 2 seperate hard drives, one with
15gb size and the other 5.99gb. The bigger one is completely empty whil
the other just contains some system files. The hard drive is actuall
160gb in size so i have no idea what is wrong, can anyone shed any ligh
on this please?? (The hard drive ran xp while my laptop runs vista i
this makes a difference?)

Thanks Paul

--
Paulcney

"Paulcney" <> wrote in message
news:...
>
> Hi there i'm wondering if anyone can help me? basically my hard drive on
> my old pc stopped working so i bought a hard drive enclosure to try and
> turn it into an external and salvage my files, however when i connect
> this to my laptop it is recognised as 2 seperate hard drives, one with a
> 15gb size and the other 5.99gb. The bigger one is completely empty while
> the other just contains some system files. The hard drive is actually
> 160gb in size so i have no idea what is wrong, can anyone shed any light
> on this please?? (The hard drive ran xp while my laptop runs vista is
> this makes a difference?)
>
> Thanks Paul.
>
>
> --
> Paulcney



You did say, after all, that the drive was defective!

If it fails in the computer why would you think that you would not see the
result of that failure when connected externally?

Restore your data from the backups I am sure you have made.

--

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP
Windows Desktop Experience & Security

If all fails & data is critical & you can afford you can give it to a Data
Restoration company.
It depends whether it's worth.

I was able to recover several times in totally hopeless situations with
corrupt MBR, viruses, etc. but it's for people for whom computers are "bread
& butter".
It's related to my profession.
But you sound like you could benefit from a professional resstoration
services, else you'd not be posting here.
You did say the drive was corrupt, so whether internal or external
enclosure, doesn't matter - something is bad with the drive logically on on
hardware level.

We had Senior EE engineer who has no clue of computers (yes it happens, he
is old!) whose hopeless situation was fixed by a Software Engiener as we all
worked together in the same company, one engineer helped another for free.
You're probably not that lucky.... give it to someone who might charge some
$$$ but if you want data & no backup, you're going to pay....

On Sun, 4 Oct 2009 15:38:30 -0500, Paulcney wrote:

> Hi there i'm wondering if anyone can help me? basically my hard drive on
> my old pc stopped working so i bought a hard drive enclosure to try and
> turn it into an external and salvage my files, however when i connect
> this to my laptop it is recognised as 2 seperate hard drives, one with a
> 15gb size and the other 5.99gb. The bigger one is completely empty while
> the other just contains some system files. The hard drive is actually
> 160gb in size so i have no idea what is wrong, can anyone shed any light
> on this please?? (The hard drive ran xp while my laptop runs vista is
> this makes a difference?)
>
> Thanks Paul.

I suspect that the smaller partition is the infamous restore partition that
manufacturers provide these days in lieu of a system CD.

The emptiness of the other drive might be, as Richard Urban said, as
symptom of the failure, sadly.

There is drive recovery software available for a price. Just don't restore
the drive to itself, since you'd be writing on what you're trying to
read...And there's no assurance it would recover your drive :-(

--
Gene E. Bloch letters0x40blochg0x2Ecom