Help! I'm not a pro here, just want to get some old files off of my broken HD. It's a partitioned drive with 15Gig on the FAT32, which also holds the damaged OS (Windows XP startup files got corrupted in a power outage). Then there's a 60Gig NTFS drive with no OS on it that has most of the files I want on it. When I plug it into a USB/IDE cable to run it as an external, the only part of the drive that shows up is the FAT32 part that has the OS on it. When I try to open it in Explorer (my laptop uses Vista), Explorer stops responding. Sometimes I can see the folders but I'm never able to open them. I'm thinking there is a conflict with both drives trying to operate simultaneously, but I'm not sure how to fix it. All I want are family photos and files from the old D drive, and I'm coherent enough to follow directions and steps if I'm told how to do this. Thanks! If you need more info let me know..

What is this usb/ide cabe? Just an adapter cable? Are you pluging in an external power source as well? because that may be the problem...Just trying to figure out where you are at here so as to forgo issues you have already done!

The USB/IDE cable is an adapter and does come with an external power supply as well.

Ok then from what i can see you are going to need to use some data recovery software to get your data. When the interuption of the power came it caused an internal error hiding the partition from showing. The recovery software can recover your stuff but it is going to need to be installed on the laptop and then ran for however long (takes hours and even days) and you will need as much empty space as that which equals the damaged drive.how this works is that the recovery program makes passes over the damaged disc and then slowly rebuilds the damage pixel by pixel!

but before doing so try running chkdisk /f on the damaged drive and see if it can self repair itself...also you might look into the use of the manufacturer's drive utility. Sometimes these can repair the micro data stored in the front of each drive and partition and allow you to access the other partition. The last thing is to use the recovery programs.

Data Recovery Software - Hard Drive Recovery - RAID Data Recovery

GRC*|*Hard drive data recovery software**

These are the two that I have used with great success but they are not free!