Member Avatar for electron123

hi guys ! mine is a sim prb . my old 40 gb sammsng drive shows in bios bt not in drive manager.

lookiing for help. some imp data in there.thnks

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by mjdodd

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Building on the hardware-focused suggestions from and , the immediate priority is preserving any important data. Initializing or formatting the disk from Windows will overwrite partition metadata and reduce recovery chances. When a drive is detectable at the hardware level but not presenting usable volumes to the OS, treat the disk as potentially recoverable and avoid write actions until an image is taken.

Recommended triage (in order):

  • Attempt a non-destructive visibility check from the host OS. An elevated command prompt can run DiskPart and trigger a rescan:

    diskpart
list disk
rescan
exit

  • If the physical device appears but no volumes are shown, use a Linux live USB to inspect kernel messages (dmesg) and device lists (lsblk). If I/O errors are present, create a sector image first (read-only) using a tool such as GNU ddrescue.

  • If the partition table or filesystem is damaged but the media reads, try recovering partitions with TestDisk (it works without writing to user data unless explicitly instructed).

Hardware symptoms such as repeated clicking, grinding, or many bad sectors reported by imaging tools indicate imminent mechanical failure; stop attempts and consult a professional recovery service. TestDisk and ddrescue documentation provide practical, free recovery workflows: TestDisk wiki and GNU ddrescue. For DiskPart reference see Microsoft DiskPart.

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Member Avatar for caperjack

are the jumpers on the drive set correctly

Member Avatar for mjdodd

I totally agree with caperjack, but when looking at the jumpers on the HD make sure that you are aware of the difference of using cable select or drive selection (master/slave). Cable select may not work with older drives.
M

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