Just got the unit today. it will not come on. I get the light to come on for 2 seconds and then it goes off.
Hi Michael,
Thanks for contacting us. Sorry for the frustration – I know how frantic it is when you’re trying to get something done quickly, pay for one-day ship, and hit a problem.
The most common reason for the SATA dock LED to go off when it starts reading a drive, is because of a problem with the drive. We see this often, because people are trying to recover drives from a system that’s failed, and they don’t yet know whether the drive is good or not.
Can you say a bit more about what type of machine (Windows or Mac?) this drive came from, and was the drive known to be working or not?
Do you have another known good bare drive around, that you could test to confirm whether the SATA dock is a problem or not?
We’ll see if there’s anything that can be done in terms of configuration, since there’s not time to try swapping SATA docks before Tuesday. But we’ll do everything we can.
You also emailed support@plugable.com and got a ticket going with us there – feel free to reply back there to figure this out. We just wanted to reply both places to make sure this reached you quickly.
Thanks for your patience!
Bernie
The drive came from a Dell laptop E6410. Winows 7. The drive will not boot up. Trying to recover the data. If I hold the U3 in my hand and squeeze the plug, the unit comes on. How can I get the data off of the drive? Thank you.
Hi Michael - thanks for your quick reply. If squeezing the plug makes any difference, there’s definitely a problem with the SATA dock unit. Can you describe a little more about what your doing and how that changes the behavior vs. just hitting the power switch on the dock normally?
And if you keep the power going to the dock that way, is the drive shown by Windows?
We’re trying to figure out whether it’s a dock problem, a drive problem, or both.
Thanks!
Bernie
I let go and it is now trying to read the Drive. It is showing as Drive G but I cannot see the data. My wife slammed the laptop closed and caused this. I am trying to save my daughter’s data and be the here. Thank you so much for your efforts in helping me.
Great - if it’s seeing that drive letter, the SATA dock appears to be working, and knows there’s a drive there.
If it’s showing no files on the drive (G), could you open a Windows 7 command prompt, run the command “chkdsk g:” and let us know what it reports?
Sometimes drives have just high-level (filesystem) corruption, which chkdsk may be able to repair. Other times drives have more difficult, physical issues with the read/write heads. Chkdsk will help separate those.
Thanks for letting us know - again, we’ll do everything we can.
Thanks,
Bernie
I am running it now and will let you know the results. Thanks.
The type of the file system is NTFS,
That is what came back when trying to run the chkdsk g:
When I click on it from a Window 7 window it says: "g: is not accessible. Parameter is not correct.
g:\ is not accessible. Parameter is not correct.
Hi Michael - just a quick update: we’re looking to see if there’s any likely cause based on that.
Hi Michael - I forgot one important step. The command prompt needs to be opened with administrator rights.
Can you go to win 7’s start menu and search the command prompt, but don’t yet select it (it should appear in the search results above). The right-click and select “run as administrator”
Then, once that’s open, run chkdsk g: again. If that gets us past the “not accessible” problem, let us know, and what chkdsk reports for a basic run. We’ll ultimately want to run chkdsk with particular parameters “chkdsk /r /x g:” to make sure all errors are caught.
Thanks for letting us know how that goes.
Bernie
It is now 9:30 EST and I am still at 2% and afraid to touch the plugable unit for fear it will stop.
Hi Michael - Thanks for the update. Chkdsk as we’ve run it (with no parameters), is just analyzing the disk (not fixing anything), so it wouldn’t hurt anything to stop it.
(by the way, here are the parameters to chkdsk and what they do: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/li…)
The signs aren’t good though - if chkdsk makes it part of the way then gets stuck, it does increase the probability that it’s a disk that’s been damaged when it was in the laptop.
If you’re willing at this point, I would go ahead and run chkdsk with extra parameters to attempt to fix the disk as it goes. Run it with parameters:
chkdsk /v /r /x g:
/v gives you file by file progress, so if it gets stuck again, you’ll see that more clearly
/x Forces the volume to dismount first, if necessary. All open handles to the drive are invalidated. /x also includes the functionality of /f.
/r Locates bad sectors and recovers readable information. The disk must be locked (which /x does). /r includes the functionality of /f, with the additional analysis of physical disk errors.
If this chkdsk command isn’t able to make it through the whole drive, then it’s pointing to mechanical failure while the drive was in the laptop, unfortunately. There are services which can recover the data off a damaged hard disk. Unfortunately they’re not inexpensive. We can’t recommend a particular one, but if you google search, you’ll find several like http://crucialdatarecovery.com/
Or, if you’ve got a Best Buy or local computer shop nearby, it may be worth taking the drive in there for recovery. Maybe a little more expensive, but you’ll be able to talk directly with a human being which is helpful in a situation like this.
Let us know if we can do anything at all to help. We’ll do whatever we can.
Best wishes,
Bernie
Thank you so much. I really appreciate the support. I will let you know what happens.
It did not work. Taking to a computer expert to see if he can recover the data.
Thanks again.
Thanks for letting us know. That’s the best way to go. I know you bought our product just to try to recover the drive – we would understand about a return, since it wasn’t able to help in the recovery. Best wishes to you.
Bernie