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We have an old printer we are throwing out, but we need to see what data was there before we decide on the method to discard the drive.

We want to avoid sending it to a data recovery shop to reduce costs.

The printer is a toshiba e-studio 3540c

The drive doesn't show up on the Disk Management for windows But it appears under your naming scheme on the Windows Explorer. We tried using a dock to connect to the hard drive, but all we got was Access Denied Message

We looked at tools like rapidspar, but we are still determining if that could help us.

What other tools could we use to get the data off the hard drive?

  • The Hard-drive is 2.5 HDD, not damaged or have issues we know of
  • Came out of a working printer
  • We are using a windows computer to access the drive

If this post is inappropriate for this "Super User" community, please advise which other stack-over community would best fit this question thanks in advance.

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    If someone is employing you to do this research, they ought to also consider the economic value of your time too. Smack it with a large hammer & send it to recycle is the most secure and economical way to deal with this.
    – Tetsujin
    Commented Jan 9, 2023 at 18:53
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    What kind of data are you expecting to get from this drive? Modern printers often encrypt their internal drives (looks like e-studio only does in high-security mode: business.toshiba.com/downloads/KB/f1Ulds/14790/…), so the drive won't be readable outside the printer. They're not exactly formatted in a way that you could simply export data from to "check" if anything is there. If you just want to clean it before trashing, give it a good dbanning and call it a day
    – Cpt.Whale
    Commented Jan 9, 2023 at 19:31
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    this is an XY question ... you are asking about reading data, when your concern is about data security ... your real question appears to be something like how to ensure data security in a scrap hard drive?
    – jsotola
    Commented Jan 9, 2023 at 19:56
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    drill a few holes through the hard drive .... if the potential data is very sensitive, then open the drive, remove the platters, scratch them with rough sandpaper, burn them with a blowtorch, tear them apart and throw the pieces into different areas of a river
    – jsotola
    Commented Jan 9, 2023 at 20:01
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    I agree with @Tetsujin but I myself use a drill press. Will the printer boot up? If so, use the printer itself to do a secure format of the drive. It is a feature of the firmware accessible from the printer screen.
    – Señor CMasMas
    Commented Jan 9, 2023 at 20:15

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The problem the printer file system is if the drive is encrypted and therefore you won't be able to access the data at all. It's password protected and without the password you won't get ANY data ever.

Now they also could be using an alternative file system which windows doesn't recognize.

Your only possibility would be to boot a live linux cd,dvd, or usb and see if linux supports the file system. Linux supports many files systems, and you should see if gparted can shed any light on what they are using.

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