gnakh

Guys, first of all, thanks a lot for all your contributions. And, what can I say? I recovered my drive so I love you for your efforts. But, my recovering the drive was not easy since I got an a.2 CA-42 cable and I couldn't find how to set it up (too many posts in this thread) so I decided to go on and do some testing and here are the results: First of all, stuff I used: * CA-42 cable * CDROM audio cable * Two AA batteries * some tools (very small flat screw driver, torx 6, cutter, tape, etc...) * A couple of wires The hard part was making the CA-42 work. The CA-42 I had is the one which is wrapped in an isolating copper shield and, then in plastic. After removing all that stuff I reached the PCB, where no connector had any label. This CA-42 PCB has two sides, one with two cables (yellow and red) for power and the other one with three (blue, white and black) for data. So, this is how the cabling goes: * Red for +3V (I've not verified if it works with +5V) * Yellow for power GND * White for DATA RX (to HDD TX) * Blue for DATA (TX (to HDD RX) * Black for DATA GND (which I connected to power GND and battery pack (-)) This CA-42 requires external power to work. Thus, I used two AA batteries connected in series, stuck together with a piece of adhesive tape and some aluminum foil in between to guarantee proper electrical connectivity. Once you connect the batteries to the wires, if you connect the cable to any USB port, Windows will recognize the device. As for the drivers, I used Nokia's. It won't install a virtual COM port but it will install a modem which is connected to a serial port (not shown under ports). Go to your device manager, find the modem and within its properties you'll find the COM port the modem is using. Use putty, select 'Serial' connection and then use the port used by the modem with the proper settings (38400-8-N-1). And... hopefully there you go! To power the drive I used an external SATA-to-USB/eSATA 3'5" case by AKASA. Putting everything together I was able to reach the HDD's console and do the magic to recover it following Gradius2 instructions. (Remember to add some isolation between the pins going to the HDD - mine was very amateur but worked). If you've never disassembled a CDROM (or any of this type of cables), simply insert a small screw driver (or pin or whatever) on the shiny spot in the middle of the connector and pull the cable. To watch the rest of the images: http://img23.imageshack.us/gal.php?g=ca42cables.jpg Again, thanks a lot for helping me recover my precious data. Enjoy!