Recovering data from an old IDE drive

[DrewSG3]

My father has an old IDE drive that he needs some important files from, but the problem is that I don't have a motherboard with an IDE slot.. so I ended up buy a couple different IDE -> SATA adapters, it seemingly works as Windows 10 sees it as a hard drive, but I can't access it

In disk management, the drive shows the correct size (232gb out of 250), but shows it all as UNALLOCATED and not initialized . When I try to scan the disk in TESTDISK, it say READ ERROR, and EaseUS Data Recovery shows it as a lost partition.. Is there anyway to get the data back? I don't want to do anything with the partition and risk losing the data

 

[Insert_Nickname]

First, don't make any changes at all if the disk says unallocated. Any attempt to access might make things worse.

Since an IDE-to-SATA adaptor doesn't seem to work, you could try a IDE-to-USB one. 3.5" drives require 12V, so make sure it has a separate power adaptor. A 250GB shouldn't be old enough to cause trouble with such.

The harder way is getting a PCIe PATA controller. If you have an older PC with a PCI slot, you might be able to dig up a native IDE controller cheaply. I've had best luck with Silicon Image and Marvell controllers.

If you still can't access it, it's time to call the pros. Be warned, this isn't cheap.

 

[DrewSG3]

I've tried both adapters, first was the IDE to SATA and second one was the IDE to USB, both had the same results.. Any chance a PCIe PATA would be any different?

 

[Insert_Nickname]

A native controller does away with the translation layer inherent in IDE-to-USB/SATA. Also, since it uses the drives native command set, it should in theory work better.

The drive itself might be defective though, so there are no guarantees.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Don't forget that PCs of that era, often (?) sometimes still used C/H/S addressing, for IDE drives, rather than LBA. This "geometry mis-match" may be an issue with Windows 10 and the USB adapter firmware, preferring to address it as LBA only.

 

[corkyg]

Put it in an external powered case that supports PATA IDE and connect via USB.