Restoring damaged hard drive

I have a problematic laptop drive, that I'm trying to rescue. I've plugged it into my Mac G5, in the second position, and it does not mount and does not appear in disk utility. I've tried having my main drive in the second position, and the damaged laptop drive in the top position. On booting, it tries to read the damaged drive, gives that Folder icon with the Question mark, then moves on to boot off my main drive. Again the damaged drive does not mount nor appear in Disk Utility, however, it realises that the main drive is on Coonection ID Device 0 "B (lower)".

Is there any way I can save the damaged lap top disk? How can I see what is on A (Upper)?

Thank you,

j

Johnnymaddog said:

I have a problematic laptop drive, that I'm trying to rescue. I've plugged it into my Mac G5, in the second position, and it does not mount and does not appear in disk utility. I've tried having my main drive in the second position, and the damaged laptop drive in the top position. On booting, it tries to read the damaged drive, gives that Folder icon with the Question mark, then moves on to boot off my main drive. Again the damaged drive does not mount nor appear in Disk Utility, however, it realises that the main drive is on Coonection ID Device 0 "B (lower)".

Is there any way I can save the damaged lap top disk? How can I see what is on A (Upper)?

Click to expand...

How is it connected internally? I'm pretty sure you need an adapter to connect laptop hard drives to desktop computers (or does your G5 take smaller drives?) and you also potentially have jumpers to worry about. If it were me, I'd put the drive in an enclosure and connect it through USB or FireWire.

No, the G5 as the power and data connectors that fit the Lap Top Hard Drive. I like the idea of the external box, but if I can't see it now, is the external connection via USB or FireWire going to help?

What are the jumpers?

Johnnymaddog said:

No, the G5 as the power and data connectors that fit the Lap Top Hard Drive. I like the idea of the external box, but if I can't see it now, is the external connection via USB or FireWire going to help?

What are the jumpers?

Click to expand...

Since the G5 takes laptop hard drives, I don't think you'll need to worry about jumpers, and connecting it externally probably won't make a difference. If you can't see it in Disk Utility, your drive might be dead. Can you feel/hear it spin up, or make unusual clicking noises?

Hmm... I can't guarantee it's spinning. This doesn't look good...

It sounds as if the drive is toast. Try to see if you can hear the drive spin/make any noise whatsoever when you try to boot from it. If not, it's done (unless it is not plugged in properly). If it makes noise, let us know what noises it makes.