Extracting contents of a HDD fitted to a Yamaha CDR-HD1500

[Nick]

Whether or not you can read the disk and get meaningful data off of depends on a number of factors:

• Is the disk mechanically functional?
  
• Is the on-disk file structure corrupt?
  
• Is the on-disk file structure one that Windows can understand?
  
• Are the files within that structure corrupt?
  

Its possible that the disk is formatted FAT32 - the formal most likely if the CDR software was trying to be Windows-compatible. But why would the manufacturers want to bother with that?

More likely is that the system uses a variety of an embedded O/S, probably Linux (though many others are around). If it is Linux-based, then the disk structure is likely to be EXT3 or EXT4 rather than the Windows FAT32 or NTFS.

You can get EXTn drivers for WIndows 7 - normally these are free.

So, if you pass the "mechanically functional" test, but your can't mount the disk, either the format is corrupt OR you actually have a disk formatted EXT3 or EXT4.

Good, honest, detective fun