I thought recovery was not recoverable through software means if the BIOS doesn't detect the drive, but it turns out not always true. At my work, an executive secretary kept important files on a drive that stopped booting. I have been a computer technician for 15 years and used ddrescue for 5 years. I could not find a way to recover anything on the drive. One of the executives wanted to try recovering data after I explained all the things I tried This is a man who has no formal IT experience, except he told me he has been tinkering with computers for the last 40 years. So he plugs the drive into sata port and boot up the computer and the drive starts clicking and I see that it not detected in the BIOS. After Windows 7 boots up, he goes to "Computer" and the drive is there. After I pick up my jaw that has just landed on the floor, I start coping over
important files. They copy at 3 MB/s which I guess means it is doing it over PIO mode 0, but they all copy successfully. How does Windows access this drive without BIOS detection? Can I do the same with Linux with RAW option or another option in ddrescue? The disk won't show up as a /dev/sdX device in Linux. Any ideas?
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