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Disk check with external enclosure?

R

Randybob01

Junior Member
Ok, the story - my current rig has run its course. The motherboard has always had some problem or another, but since a new computer was out of my budget (blasted economy) I found cheaper ways to keep it going. For one, all four SATA ports blew out in the space of a month in which I was unemployed, and the mobo's warranty had ended. So I got a Rosewill PCI SATA controller card to hook up my WD5000AAKS hard drive to. This drive has OpenSUSE on it, the IDE HD has Windows XP and GRUB on it. I was in Linux, got a kernel panic, and after trying to reboot, I got GRUB Error 21 (system won't boot).

I figured it was an issue with either the motherboard, or the controller card. I took the hard drive out and attempted to plug it into another system's SATA ports. That system would not boot with the drive plugged into it, I tried both available SATA ports. After unplugging it, it booted up just fine again. I've got a Vantec NST-310S3-BK external enclosure on order from Newegg coming, and the plan is to put the hard drive in there, see if I can get my critical data off it, and run a disk check. But since the other computer wouldn't boot with it plugged into the SATA port, I'm wondering - is it the drive that's dead instead of the Rosewill card or PCI bus on the first computer's motherboard? I never heard any clicking or grinding out of it. Is running the disk check on it an unnecessary risk?

I do have a job now, and will be building a new system soon - but the first priority is to make sure my data is safe.
 
So, to reiterate. Parts of your mobo are exploding and being unable to buy a new mobo (budget ones go for 60 to 70$) you spent probably about 40$ on an external enclosure and a SATA card, and yet it still doesn't work? Oh, and who knows how many hours...

It might be time for you to replace your exploding motherboard before it ruins all your other hardware too, it can and it will short out your CPU, RAM, HDD, etc.
 
Yeah, replacing the motherboard is in the works, now that I can afford to. It's just the hard drives that I'm concerned about at this point, particularly the SATA drive. The enclosure is meant to 1) help me get the data off the drive while I consider my next purchase and 2) be around for future use. My concern is that since the other computer won't boot with the drive plugged into the SATA port, that the drive itself may be going, though it didn't give any obvious signs of going. And if it's going, whether using the drive with the enclosure to evacuate the data will make matters worse.
 
It shouldn't boot if the hardware is sufficiently different.

don't boot from it. Boot from another drive with it as secondary internal drive and copy your data off of it.
 
taltamir said:
It shouldn't boot if the hardware is sufficiently different.

don't boot from it. Boot from another drive with it as secondary internal drive and copy your data off of it.
Click to expand...
That's what I tried to do. The other computer wouldn't boot at all with it hooked up as a secondary. That's why I'm concerned that the drive might have gone bad all of a sudden.
 
I misunderstood you.

When you say the other computer doesn't boot, do you mean it doesn't finish POST (BIOS power on self test) or that windows/linux fails to run? Basically, at what point does it fail.

If it fails to POST with that drive connected that is indeed a clear indication something broke in the drive. I take it you have no backups?
 
Randybob01 said:
I took the hard drive out and attempted to plug it into another system's SATA ports. That system would not boot with the drive plugged into it, I tried both available SATA ports. After unplugging it, it booted up just fine again.
Click to expand...
Check the BOOT priority settings in the BIOS of the other system - there are often two settings - (1) boot priority (eg CD drive first, HDD second), and (2) the HDD priorities. With some BIOS's it is only the top option selected in (2) that appears as an option in (1) for HDD. Connecting another drive can change these boot priority settings.


Randybob01 said:
I've got a Vantec NST-310S3-BK external enclosure on order from Newegg coming, and the plan is to put the hard drive in there, see if I can get my critical data off it, and run a disk check.
Click to expand...
Hopefully its a good enclosure. I recently bought a StarTech IDE USB2 enclosure and on three good drives it caused NTFS file system errors, causing data loss and rendering a system partition unbootable. However, CHKDSK recovered most of the data back again. I bought a CiC SATA/IDE USB2 enclosure from ARIA (UK) and so far all is well, with no NTFS errors. Perhaps the newer enclosures are best.
 
Last edited:
taltamir said:
I misunderstood you.

When you say the other computer doesn't boot, do you mean it doesn't finish POST (BIOS power on self test) or that windows/linux fails to run? Basically, at what point does it fail.

If it fails to POST with that drive connected that is indeed a clear indication something broke in the drive. I take it you have no backups?
Click to expand...
On the original system, everything POSTed but it ran into a GRUB Error 21, which is the MBR on the IDE drive. Not sure if GRUB there would depend on what's on the other physical drive, since everything else Linux-y is on the SATA.

On the other computer, it failed to initialize the BIOS. It was stuck on "Wait . . ." That SATA was also my backup drive unfortunately, since it was the newer one. The IDE got full, and there are a few files on the SATA that I still need.
 
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