Once upon a time I had a server

[peterfranks]

Some years ago I built a media server, using windows home server, and had about 15TB of movies and music.

 

After a few years I realized that I actually never used it, so I used the main board and CPU for a normal windows install.

 

The Hard disks I just removed and kept in a cabinet.

 

So now I thought that I easily could recover the data by connecting each disk to my PC, and copy over the data.

 

Looks as if I was wrong.

 

From all the disks, there is just one that is accessible.

 

With the others my PC even fails to boot up. It get to loading operating system, then get stuck on the Windows logo.

 

Any suggestions how I would be able to recover the data from the disks?

[gamb00ler]

You state you have multiple drives from your old windows server.  I hope they were not configured in a RAID structure.  If that's the case getting access to your data would be a real challenge.

 

Assuming no RAID, please give a few more details.

 

Do you remember if you were using Windows Drive Extender?  If yes, that will probably complicate any recovery.

 

How are you connecting the drives to the computer?  If you can, I suggest boot without any extra drives connected and then connect them as external drives via USB.

 

 

[peterfranks]

28 minutes ago, gamb00ler said:

You state you have multiple drives from your old windows server.  I hope they were not configured in a RAID structure.  If that's the case getting access to your data would be a real challenge.

 

Assuming no RAID, please give a few more details.

 

Do you remember if you were using Windows Drive Extender?  If yes, that will probably complicate any recovery.

 

How are you connecting the drives to the computer?  If you can, I suggest boot without any extra drives connected and then connect them as external drives via USB.

 

 

It is so long ago that I don't remember details, but I believe drive extender was used

[ChristianBlessing]

As noted by @gamb00ler, mounting the drives via USB is your best bet. It seems unlikely any damage or decay occurred while not in use, so with luck your data will be intact and accessible. Of course if you used RAID array things get more complex but there are dozens of disc utilities that make recovery easier. Good luck 

[OneMoreFarang]

Obviously it would be best if you know some details like:

Which motherboard?

Onboard controller or additional controller, which?

Operating system?

File format?

RAID?

 

It seems a lot of information about the disks is shown in a partitioning program like partition magic. When you have the information how the disk are formatted and if they are healthy then you can continue from there.

 

For older disks you can use adapters like this one:

 

 

And if a disk is damaged with bad blocks and you still want to recover most of the data, then this is often possible by cloning the whole disk with a program like Norton Ghost. It can be set to ignore bad sectors. And then you can recover most of the data from the cloned disk.

 

 

 

[peterfranks]

Got myself such a Sata to Usb adapter and have managed to recover part of the data.

 

With drive extender, I think files are spread over all HDD in the server, which mean I can see all content on every HDD, but the files are not always there.

 

I have one disk, which connects to the PC, as I hear the sound when I plug in the USB, and Windows installs the drivers for the HDD, but my computer doesn't see the drive.

 

Any suggestions on that?

 

Another question is, those adapters are hot plug capable. Why can't I hot plug the disk in the PC?

[The Hammer2021]

Take it to Tuk Com

[RedBackman]

5 hours ago, peterfranks said:

Got myself such a Sata to Usb adapter and have managed to recover part of the data.

 

With drive extender, I think files are spread over all HDD in the server, which mean I can see all content on every HDD, but the files are not always there.

 

I have one disk, which connects to the PC, as I hear the sound when I plug in the USB, and Windows installs the drivers for the HDD, but my computer doesn't see the drive.

 

Any suggestions on that?

 

Another question is, those adapters are hot plug capable. Why can't I hot plug the disk in the PC?

Sata drives are hot plug capable, so you can...

 

As far as the drive that powers but windows doesn't see, what steps have you tried to mount it? diskmgmt.msc?

 

There are a lot of reasons a hdd might not mount. It might just be a simple windows bug or corrupted tables ...or it could be dead even if it spins and is recognized depending on what broke. Contrary to what some others have said consumer hdds and ssds aren't designed around long-tem cold storage and both data and mechanical components can degrade even if they aren't in use. The environmental factors they are exposed to during their time in storage will make a huge difference as well.

[JayClay]

6 hours ago, peterfranks said:

With drive extender, I think files are spread over all HDD in the server, which mean I can see all content on every HDD, but the files are not always there.

 

I have one disk, which connects to the PC, as I hear the sound when I plug in the USB, and Windows installs the drivers for the HDD, but my computer doesn't see the drive.

 

Any suggestions on that?

I've never used Windows drive extender so this is only guesswork.

 

You say that all the files show on one drive even if they're not actually physically on the drive.

 

Have you tried plugging *both* drives in at the same time? Maybe if they're both plugged in Windows will know where to look for the "missing" data.

[peterfranks]

2 hours ago, JayClay said:

I've never used Windows drive extender so this is only guesswork.

 

You say that all the files show on one drive even if they're not actually physically on the drive.

 

Have you tried plugging *both* drives in at the same time? Maybe if they're both plugged in Windows will know where to look for the "missing" data.

I only have 1 sata>usb adapter, so can't plug in 2 drives.

 

What I mean is that on each drive all files that were on the server are indexed, while the actual files are spread over several disks. So I can find them, by exploring each disk file by file.

 

3 hours ago, RedBackman said:

As far as the drive that powers but windows doesn't see, what steps have you tried to mount it? diskmgmt.msc?

 

There are a lot of reasons a hdd might not mount. It might just be a simple windows bug or corrupted tables

I use the same sata>usb adapter with the same cables for each disk. As soon as I plug in the USB, the disks shows up in 'my computer', only one doesn't.

 

I'm using Windows 7.

 

I haven't checked in disk management, but if the disk shows there, I assume I will have to format it anyway, and my intention is to copy the data over.

[RedBackman]

9 minutes ago, peterfranks said:

I only have 1 sata>usb adapter, so can't plug in 2 drives.

 

What I mean is that on each drive all files that were on the server are indexed, while the actual files are spread over several disks. So I can find them, by exploring each disk file by file.

 

I use the same sata>usb adapter with the same cables for each disk. As soon as I plug in the USB, the disks shows up in 'my computer', only one doesn't.

 

I'm using Windows 7.

 

I haven't checked in disk management, but if the disk shows there, I assume I will have to format it anyway, and my intention is to copy the data over.

All part of the troubleshooting. It's helpful built-in GUI to see if your HDD is at least recognized correctly and you can try to force it to mount from there. You could also use mountvol in cmd to do approximately the same thing and chkdsk to try to fix corruption/logical errors.

[peterfranks]

HDD seems to be dead. Doesn't show up in disk management either, not with the sata>usb adapter nor connected directly to the MB

[RedBackman]

10 hours ago, peterfranks said:

HDD seems to be dead. Doesn't show up in disk management either, not with the sata>usb adapter nor connected directly to the MB

Yeah if it doesn't show up at all in disk management that's a pretty bad sign, especially if it's the same model/configuration as all the other drives you tested. If you're only worried about the data I think technically drive extender had a 'duplication' data redundancy feature so you might be able to use the other drives to recover the broken one.

[peterfranks]

4 hours ago, RedBackman said:

you might be able to use the other drives to recover the broken one.

Can you elaborate on how I would do that please? Note, I don't have the server any more.

 

Like I said, the complete index is on all drives, but many of the folders are empty

 

Each drive has different folders that are empty.

 

 

[RedBackman]

21 minutes ago, peterfranks said:

Can you elaborate on how I would do that please? Note, I don't have the server any more.

 

Like I said, the complete index is on all drives, but many of the folders are empty

 

Each drive has different folders that are empty.

 

 

I'm not super familiar with WHS drive extender tbh, I just remember it had mirroring and parity options that had data redundancy. I think it should all be on the other drives in hidden folders if you set it up that way, but not sure what the easiest way to reassemble it would be. When they were actually part of a server storage pool I think it would just repair itself when you marked a drive dead if you had enough room or you replaced the drive.