Very Specific Hard Drive Question
April 18, 2023 4:13 PM Subscribe
I saved two hard drives from my old computer (which died suddenly - probably graphics card) thinking I might get a hard drive reader so I could look through them. It will be fine if not because most of the stuff I wanted was on a thumb drive. But I wouldn't mind checking to see if there is anything I want there if it's not too much trouble.
Can you tell me if it is likely and relatively easy to do that with one or both of these two hard drives:
1. Western Digital SATA/32MB Cache, MDL: WD10EALX - 009BA0, 1.0TB, date 15 Nov 2011
2. crucial BX500 2.5 SSD, MDL: CT1000BX500SSDI
If not, I would like to get rid of them rather than store them forever like those floppy disks I still have from college.
Can you tell me if it is likely and relatively easy to do that with one or both of these two hard drives:
1. Western Digital SATA/32MB Cache, MDL: WD10EALX - 009BA0, 1.0TB, date 15 Nov 2011
2. crucial BX500 2.5 SSD, MDL: CT1000BX500SSDI
If not, I would like to get rid of them rather than store them forever like those floppy disks I still have from college.
If you're any good with computers you can open up the case and plug an old hard drive in alongside the current one. You'll need a cable. Most motherboards will accommodate four, and you can leave them in there and use them for extra space or as backups, or just to go through when you have time. I imagine any computer shop can do this if you're not comfortable.
posted by AugustusCrunch at 9:05 PM on April 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by AugustusCrunch at 9:05 PM on April 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
Seconding the USB3 adapter. It's usually much less hassle than faffing about inside a computer case to find places to mount a couple extra SATA drives, and USB3 is fast enough that you wouldn't notice any loss of speed.
The little generic adaptor plugs that sagc linked above work just fine. If you want less wire on your desktop you might prefer the two slice toaster style that would let you plug both your drives in at once via a single USB cable.
If those drives came out of a Windows box then they're probably formatted as NTFS volumes, and regardless of whether you connect them to some other Windows box via a USB3 adapter or directly via SATA cables, you might end up running into Access Denied issues.
This happens because NTFS maintains access control lists (ACLs) for every file and folder, and the security identifiers (SIDs) upon which those ACLs are based include a component unique to the computer that wrote them. So when you connect them to some other computer, the SIDs for your old files and folders almost certainly won't match those for your user account on the new computer, and Windows will deny you access.
There are a couple of ways to work around this. The one I prefer is to boot the new computer into some suitable live Linux distribution (I like Knoppix for this) before plugging the old drives in, then using its file browser to copy the files and folders I care about from the old drives onto the new. This works because Linux implementations of NTFS are set up by default to ignore the ACLs attached to files and folders they read, and to attach maximally permissive ACLs to files and folders they write.
The way most people end up doing it, though, doesn't involve booting into an alternative OS. If your Windows user account has administrator privileges (which most do, by default) then you can use the Windows file browser to alter the ACLs on the old drives' files and folders such that your current user account is given access.
I prefer going the Linux route because it doesn't involve making changes to the disks I'm trying to recover stuff from, changes which to my way of thinking carry an unacceptable-because-avoidable risk of worsening any existing filesystem damage that might have been inflicted on those disks as the computer they were removed from originally failed.
All of the above assumes that neither the files themselves nor the drives that held them were encrypted. If they were, you're probably SOL; I know of no way to recover encryption keys from a dead Windows installation and no way to break Windows encryption without the keys.
posted by flabdablet at 7:24 AM on April 19, 2023 [2 favorites]
The little generic adaptor plugs that sagc linked above work just fine. If you want less wire on your desktop you might prefer the two slice toaster style that would let you plug both your drives in at once via a single USB cable.
If those drives came out of a Windows box then they're probably formatted as NTFS volumes, and regardless of whether you connect them to some other Windows box via a USB3 adapter or directly via SATA cables, you might end up running into Access Denied issues.
This happens because NTFS maintains access control lists (ACLs) for every file and folder, and the security identifiers (SIDs) upon which those ACLs are based include a component unique to the computer that wrote them. So when you connect them to some other computer, the SIDs for your old files and folders almost certainly won't match those for your user account on the new computer, and Windows will deny you access.
There are a couple of ways to work around this. The one I prefer is to boot the new computer into some suitable live Linux distribution (I like Knoppix for this) before plugging the old drives in, then using its file browser to copy the files and folders I care about from the old drives onto the new. This works because Linux implementations of NTFS are set up by default to ignore the ACLs attached to files and folders they read, and to attach maximally permissive ACLs to files and folders they write.
The way most people end up doing it, though, doesn't involve booting into an alternative OS. If your Windows user account has administrator privileges (which most do, by default) then you can use the Windows file browser to alter the ACLs on the old drives' files and folders such that your current user account is given access.
I prefer going the Linux route because it doesn't involve making changes to the disks I'm trying to recover stuff from, changes which to my way of thinking carry an unacceptable-because-avoidable risk of worsening any existing filesystem damage that might have been inflicted on those disks as the computer they were removed from originally failed.
All of the above assumes that neither the files themselves nor the drives that held them were encrypted. If they were, you're probably SOL; I know of no way to recover encryption keys from a dead Windows installation and no way to break Windows encryption without the keys.
posted by flabdablet at 7:24 AM on April 19, 2023 [2 favorites]
I personally use a "USB3 Dock" to get those drives working in any Win10/Win11 system. I used to have a WavLink, but that dock, supposedly dual-HD, keeps corrupting my HDs. (I bought a couple 4 TB drives, those "retired" Enterprise drives with a lot of life left) I've just replaced it with a Cinolink dock. They are under $50.
These docks are almost fool proof. Plug USB3 end to your PC, plug power wart to wall/plug, plug power to dock, plug USB3 to dock. Plug in HD into dock, turn on dock. If your HDs are readable, you should be able to see it in "My Computer" under a new drive letter. Then you can copy them to your HD, or use that drive as a new backup drive.
posted by kschang at 5:43 PM on April 19, 2023 [1 favorite]
These docks are almost fool proof. Plug USB3 end to your PC, plug power wart to wall/plug, plug power to dock, plug USB3 to dock. Plug in HD into dock, turn on dock. If your HDs are readable, you should be able to see it in "My Computer" under a new drive letter. Then you can copy them to your HD, or use that drive as a new backup drive.
posted by kschang at 5:43 PM on April 19, 2023 [1 favorite]
This thread is closed to new comments.
Unless you did something strange with the filesystems on your old PC or the drives themselves have some issue, you should see them show up as new drives just by plugging them in through the adapter.
posted by sagc at 4:19 PM on April 18, 2023 [8 favorites]