# external hard drive showing as a cd-rom?



## winxpuser50

I'm trying to rescue some files from a Toshiba hard drive that had stopped booting up WinXP (Service Pack 2).  I just installed a new 120GB hard drive in a Toshiba laptop and my plan was to transfer whatever files I could from my old drive to the new one.

I have the old drive in a SATA enclosure, it powers on fine, the drive is spinning and when i plug in the usb ports, WinXP recognizes the drive as D:
but it recognizes it as a CD-rom, not as a hard drive.  When I try to open it, it opens as an audio file instead of a hard drive.  I presume the usb connection is okay otherwise it wouldn't recognize the drive at all.  I hear the drive spinning and the LED light on the drive enclosure is on, so I think this is probably a situation where I just need to rename the drive?  It has assigned it a drive letter of D but the mystery is why it calls it a CD instead of a hard drive.

I notice in my icon on my Toshiba laptop at the bottom that it recognizes it as a SATA bridge device (the hardware), but in My Computers it shows it as a CD-rom device.  Clearly, there's some type of incompatability that needs to be corrected so that I can open the drive up and have a chance to rescue/recover some of my important files off the disk.  

Can anybody help me with this?  I don't think the drive is "fried" or dead, if it were, it wouldn't be spinning, and it wouldn't recognize any device in My Computer, but it does recognize it and assign it a letter.  I totally was surprised when it called it a CD-rom device!  So frustrating, I was really close (I hoped) to opening this drive and getting at least some of my files off of it....thanks again.


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## johnb35

Use a regular desktop with a sata connections and sata power connectors to transfer your data.  You can burn the data to a cd/dvd and then put it on the laptop or try a different connector like one of these which work wonderful.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...sb_to_ide/sata_adapter-_-12-232-002-_-Product


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## winxpuser50

johnb35 said:


> Use a regular desktop with a sata connections and sata power connectors to transfer your data.  You can burn the data to a cd/dvd and then put it on the laptop or try a different connector like one of these which work wonderful.
> 
> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...sb_to_ide/sata_adapter-_-12-232-002-_-Product



Unfortunately I don't have a desktop and I don't have one i can borrow. I don't understand why using a desktop vs. a laptap with a SATA drive to transfer data  should make any difference.

 I looked at the SATA drive you gave the link to and it looks somewhat flakey so i'll pass on that.  It's also a little out of my price range. My SATA drive itself seems to be working fine, it powers on, and I run it as a tech would, I dont put the drive  in the enclosure, no need to do that just to transfer files.  Plus, the caddy on the hard drive itself  is drilled in pretty tight so it won't fit inside an enclosure anyway unless I drill out the scews with a power tool which I don't have. 

 I just need to know why the drive shows as a cd-rom instead of a hard drive and I keep thinking it's a situation of changing the drive letter. Currently it comes up automatically as D: but is shown as a cd-rom device instead of what it is, which is a hard drive.  If anyone has further suggestions on this please post...thanks.


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## johnb35

The adapter I linked you to is not flaky.  This adapter doesn't go inside a exterior case, all you do is plug in the old laptop hard drive into this adapter and plug the usb cable into a usuable computer and copy files over.  I have one similar to this that I bought at Tiger Direct and I'm glad I did.  I have used it a few times already to recover data for people.


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## winxpuser50

johnb35 said:


> The adapter I linked you to is not flaky.  This adapter doesn't go inside a exterior case, all you do is plug in the old laptop hard drive into this adapter and plug the usb cable into a usuable computer and copy files over.  I have one similar to this that I bought at Tiger Direct and I'm glad I did.  I have used it a few times already to recover data for people.



I read through quite a lot of the reviews of this product and while it seems it works most of the time, there were enough times when it didn't too.  I don't feel like spending $20 for another "what if" device when maybe I can figure out why my existing SATA usb drive is showing my drive as cd rom rather than a hard drive, as i feel this may be an easily fixed issue, such as changing the drive letter or something.  Here's a comment from one of the reviews of this product that proves it's not infallible:



Cons: only 1 out of 4 hard drives i hooked up worked, all are good known hard drives. one pc SATA, pc IDE, one IDE laptop and one SATA laptop drive. the only one to work was IDE for the laptop

Not too thrilled reading a comment like this...only ONE of the drives out of 4 this person hooked up worked and all were good drives.   if anyone has a logical and hopefully free and easy solution as to why my current SATA external drive usb 2.0 is being read as a cd-rom by WinXP service pack 2 on my Toshiba laptop, please post.  thanks again ....


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## johnb35

You have to remember something. You will find bad ones in everything you buy, will you not?  Look at those reviews again.  You have 826 reviews with almost 700 reviews giving it 4 or 5 stars.  Just because they got a bad one, doesn't mean you will.  The only thing I can think why your computer is listing it as a cdrom drive is becuase either you have a bad adapter or a bad driver giving it the idea thats its a cdrom drive instead of a hard drive.  That was my reason for recommending the adapter similar to what I have.

This item here is the exact same one I bought at tiger direct a few months ago.

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3012908&CatId=3770

But like i said before you will find bad ones in every batch.


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