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Before one can recover data, it is necessary to detect the drive and media. This section will gives of how new drives and media should attached to your PC.  Each type of media is attached in a different way, but because the media has probably been corrupted, so problems may arise.  Each media type is discussed in detail below.

Camera Memory Chips

A camera memory chip can not normally be read directly from a camera. There are two reasons, the first being that there many variations of camera, and camera drivers, and the second is that very few camera let an outside device actually access the memory. As it is often the memory that has become corrupted, it is essential to be able to access this directly, without any camera software 'in the way'.

The most satisfactory way to recover memory chips is with a dedicated, often USB card reader. These can be purchased for very reasonable some, say $10-20, and often read multiple types of memory chip. When used on a  XP PC, Windows 7/8 PC, the memory chip will appear as a logical drive, for instance Drive H:.  Once detected, CnW Recovery Software will be able to access the data and recover any files.

Memory chips can physically die so it always worth while testing the USB - card reader  etc to make sure the system will read working cards.

Hard disk drive, Zip and Jaz

There are several interfaces that may be used to access a disk drive, or memory chip. From a software stand point, it is necessary for the computer to see the drive as a physical drive, or as a logical drive, eg drive G:  The following interfaces are supported, USB, IDE, Serial-ATA, SCSI and Firewire.

USB

This is probably the most common interface to be used. A very good way to access failed hard disk drives is in a USB drive caddy.  This can then be hot plugged onto a PC with no dismantling of the PC. No special drivers are required.  Occasionally with USB interface, a failed drive will not be recognized immediately and it may be necessary to reboot the PC.  Sometimes, going into control panel and devices and doing a hardware scan will kick the drive interface into life. There are USB adapters that will drive laptop hard drives directly – often using 2 USB connectors to get adequate power for the drive.  Other versions are just a connector that converts an IDE cable to a connect compatible with a laptop drive. The biggest advantage of the USB interface is that the hot plugging means that 9 times out of 10, it is not necessary to reboot the computer

IDE

To connect an IDE drive directly normally means partially dismantling the PC which is not normally the preferred route. Connecting a drive requires that drive ID is set correctly, ie Master or Slave ensuring that it does not conflict with other devices on the same cable.

For obvious operating reasons, CnW software will not allow analysis or recovery from the main program hard drive, ie the C: drive. Any IDE drive must be plugged in when the computer has been turned off, and should be detected on start up.

Serial ATA and SCSI

Both these interfaces either require an suitable host adapter card, or the relevant interface built into the computer motherboard. The drive may then be connected within the PC or externally. For SCSI it not necessary to have an ASPI driver loaded, though test show that when ASPI is loaded, the software continues to work as required. Although it may be possible to plug these devices in when the computer is running, typically it will need to be rebooted to see the new device.  The alternative can be to go to the Control Panel (in Windows), select System, and then Device manager. There is an option to 'Scan for new hardware'.  This will normally detect new drives, without needing to reboot the machine.

        Firewire

Many removable drive caddies have a Firewire interface. It can be faster than USB, but does not have the same hot plugging capability of USB. Some laptops and computers have built in Firewire interfaces, for others a special adapter board will be required. To recognised a Firewire drive, it is either necessary to reboot the computer, or use functions within the control panel (see below) to recsan for new drives.  For regular swapping of drives, USB is probably easier to use.

        Parallel

Parallel interfaces are normally only used on older Zip drives.  Most more recent drives are USB based

Computer Management Control Panel

A very useful Windows tool is the Computer Management option within the control panel.  Select Administrative Tools, and then Computer Management.  The screen below will be displayed.  If this program does not detect the required drive, then neither will CnW Software - the problem is likely to be hardware related, and a software solution will not help.

When you click on Disk Management, all disks that are seen by the computer are displayed.  It may include unrecognised disk, unformatted etc. DO NOT TRY AND FORMAT ANY DAMAGED DISK, CnW Recovery software will do better at recovering data without an extra layer of format being added. On this screen, by Right Clicking on a disk description, it is possible to change the Drive Letter.  CnW Recovery does not mind which drive letter is used, but occasionally it is possible to have a drive letter conflict with a Subst Drive.

The disk management program will sometimes show a disk as a Raw drive, or raw disk. This happens when it cannot determine the operating system, or the operating system is not a standard PC one, for instance a Macintosh disk may well show in this mode. It can also be the case when the disk has lost it's boot partition. In these cases, it is often best to start by using View Sector to try and determine what type of disk it may actually be.

On the computer Management men is an Action function.  This can be used to rescan the disks, and occasionally this will add disks that have not been detected automatically.

CnW Recovery software will display drives on two ways, one as the logical drive, eg Drive :, and the other as a Physical Drive.  In the screen above, the drive marked as Disk 5  would be shown with two entries,  I: and Phys-5. With some disks, the system does not allocate a drive letter, and so the only way to view the drive is as a physical drive.  If both modes show, selecting either one will produce identical results.

Testing

Once a drive has been connected, it is often worth doing a short test to verify the connection is correct.  The simplest test is to read a sector and make sure that data can be viewed. If sector zero cannot be read, try say 100, or 0x100.  For a mini DVD, try 15,000 or so, often the start of the disk is very corrupted, and unreadable.

Drive letter or disk number

CnW Recovery has two ways it will detect and represent a drive. It can either be as a logical drive, eg Drive G:, or as a physical drive, Physical Disk 3.  Both are valid and will produce the same results. If a drive is not recognised by the operating system in any way, then the only option that will be displayed will be the Physical Drive number.

CD and DVD

For data recovery on a CD or DVD, a compatible drive is essential.  Fortunately, most new drives are always fully backwards compatible. One important note though is that burners (ie drive that will write to a blank disk) have many more features than the simpler Read only drives. For this reason, it is always best to use a drive that is a burner.

The interface of the drive is not important.  CnW Recovery software will work with all common types, such as IDE, USB and SCSI

It may be noted that for some CDs and DVDs, when they are very corrupted, or unclosed etc, the startup routine of CnW Recovery software can be rather slow (minutes rather than seconds).  This problem is being worked on, but patience is useful.