Hard-drive recorder

davolente · Joined: Oct 04, 2003 Posts: 361 Location: Kent, UK

Maybe not strictly a computing question but the principles are probably the same!
A friend's JVC DRMH30SEK hard-drive recorder has died. Not worth lashing out for a repair. New one is the order of the day but does anyone know how I can recover what's on the hard-drive? Seems to be a standard Seagate 160 gig. As a stab in the dark, I put it in an external caddy and, as I more-or-less expected, the drive is recognised in Windows XP management but only as an unallocated drive with nothing on it. Needless to say, it doesn't show up in "my computer", so it looks like there's nothing in Windows I can use, which doesn't surprise me. Thought initially that a data recovery program might work, but if the drive can't be "seen" presumably that idea goes out of the window. Any suggestions, apart from installing it in a another good machine, if I can find one? I have tried it in another make (Toshiba) and that came up with a message about being unable to initialise.

Baby_Tux · Joined: Mar 06, 2007 Posts: 1242

The first thing that came to mind for me was to find out what format that machine writes the HD in, then go from there to find a program that will allow you to read that format.

rovingcowboy · Joined: Jan 26, 2003 Posts: 1515

head for the flea markets and boot sales or to the pawn shops you should find another working machine like the one that stopped working
and then use it to get the info off the drive, unless seagate can see it.

drwho07 · Joined: Nov 29, 2007 Posts: 2238 Location: Central FL, USA

The proper (technical) answer is: If it's an IDE hard drive, first make sure the jumper is set to "Master".

Then connect it to an IDE cable in your desktop computer.
You may have to remove the cable from your CD/DVD drive for this exercise.
Just leave the drive hanging out of the side of your PC.
Don't try to install it inside the case.

Then boot up the PC and go into the bios, to make sure that the bios (motherboard) is seeing the drive correctly.

Then boot into windows, and the drive should come up in "My Computer".
If this works, then copy files from that drive to your main drive and then burn critical files to a CD or DVD.

I've already done this several times for my customers, this year alone.
In general, those external drives, that is, their enclosures and power supplies are just NOT very reliable. A hard drive can easily overheat inside those tight little enclosures. And the power supplies are inherently WEAK.
So when buying any external HD, it's "Buyer Beware!".

Doing a drive to drive copy......outside the PC.

Error: image could not be loaded. Image is not available from server

Image URL: http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g90/DrWho1943/HDProject4.jpg

Let it "All Hang out!"

Cheers Mates and Merry Christmas!

The Doctor Cool

TeeDee

davolente · Joined: Oct 04, 2003 Posts: 361 Location: Kent, UK

Thanks for that but I have read elsewhere that the data may be encrypted. Any thoughts on that?

drwho07 · Joined: Nov 29, 2007 Posts: 2238 Location: Central FL, USA

What good is backed up data, if its encrypted and nobody can read it, even its owner?
That's just ridiculous!

Cool

goretsky

Hello,

Many Linux installations use the ext3 file system, which cannot be read natively by Microsoft Windows. An installable file system (IFS) driver for ext3 may solve the problem.

You might want to try Disk Internals' Linux Reader or Stephan Schreiber's Ext2 Installable File System For Windows driver and see if one of those works.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

tahoejoe · Joined: Oct 11, 2006 Posts: 8

A common problem with these hard drive recorders are bad capacitors on the power board. I had this problem on a Panasonic E85 and I know it's also prevalent on some Polaroid models. Check the power board to see if any of the capacitors are bulging at the top. If so, you might be able to replace them with comparable capacitors from places like Radio Shack. I was able to resurrect the non-functioning E85 by replacing four capacitors, and my soldering skills are extremely modest. You can see the procedure for the E85 at:
h**ttp://www.fixya.com/support/t216825-dvd_recorder_frozen_please_wait_display]fixya site
You might be able to adapt the procedure for your friend's unit.

TeeDee