[SOLVED] Can't access hard drive

[photoman]

Hi gang,

I have a WD 350 GB hard drive that crapped out in a Windows machine. I have a USB-to-SATA/IDE adapter and right after I pulled the drive out of the Windoze machine, I was able to access the drive and look at data to recover. However, I didn't get to download the data. Now I hooked it all up again and I get nothing. I can't see the drive anymore.

My question is simply this: Is there a way I can poll the USB port and see if I can see the drive from a command line? The File Explorer isn't even seeing the drive anymore either. I'm not savvy enough with Linux to know if there is another way to see if I can rescue the data on the drive.

Thanks.

Mike

[devils casper]

Check the output of sudo fdisk -l command.

[photoman]

Ok, I finally got access to the hard drive. I have removed all of the important data and now I want to basically wipe it clean and use it as a second drive elsewhere; most likely in a Windows desktop. What is the best way to format this?

As for how I have this set up, I have a USB-to-SATA/IDE adapter connected to the hard drive and to my Linux laptop via USB port. It shows up as /media/36887F89887F4701 and not as a typical hard drive. I'm not sure if that long Hex number is the adapter that it's reading or the actual hard drive.

Thanks again.

Mike

[photoman]

I did some poking around and found that the long Hex number is actually the hard drive. I just accessed it through a terminal window.

So, what I want to do is perhaps do a zero fill on this pig because it is laden with problems and start afresh.

Mike