A friend's PC died last year and she was told her HD died. It was replaced. She was under the impression that she lost all her data. So for the hell of it I suggested she bring it over and I'd make it a slave drive and see if I could access anything.
Windows recognized it as a Wester Digital 20gig drive but even though it was a slave, it would not allow me to boot to my C drive. That also happened when I tried to clone my C drive and was unsuccessful (I think my BIOS is set correctly… first to the A drive, then CD Drives then C) Since I knew my new drive was not defective I was not deterred. I made my friend's HD into the master drive. It would not boot... no OS detected. I Tried to do an XP chkdsk_/r recovery without success. I was tempted to install XP but didn't want to overwrite any data that might be saved.
I ran a Maxtor HD test utility called PowerMax and these were the results on my friend's drive:
Power Consumption: Passed
Interface Cable Connection: Passed
Master/Slave jumpers: Passed
BIOS Extension support: Passed
Partition Info: Failed
Soft Reset Test: Passed
Drive Recal test: Passed
Drive Identity test: Passed
Drive R/W Buffer test: Passed
Check Smart Test: Not Supported
There were some more involved write tests and formatting options but I feared I'd overwrite any data that might be saved.
Since I could not get into XP with this drive attached, I could not get into XP drive management.
So is this HD fried? Or are certain sectors of the OS corrupted? Anyone have any insights from the above info? Is there a way to get my PC to boot with this drive attached? I've heard it's not a good idea to plug a drive in when the PC is already on. Any suggestions for other tests/approaches? What do data recovery services
Thanks!!
Windows recognized it as a Wester Digital 20gig drive but even though it was a slave, it would not allow me to boot to my C drive. That also happened when I tried to clone my C drive and was unsuccessful (I think my BIOS is set correctly… first to the A drive, then CD Drives then C) Since I knew my new drive was not defective I was not deterred. I made my friend's HD into the master drive. It would not boot... no OS detected. I Tried to do an XP chkdsk_/r recovery without success. I was tempted to install XP but didn't want to overwrite any data that might be saved.
I ran a Maxtor HD test utility called PowerMax and these were the results on my friend's drive:
Power Consumption: Passed
Interface Cable Connection: Passed
Master/Slave jumpers: Passed
BIOS Extension support: Passed
Partition Info: Failed
Soft Reset Test: Passed
Drive Recal test: Passed
Drive Identity test: Passed
Drive R/W Buffer test: Passed
Check Smart Test: Not Supported
There were some more involved write tests and formatting options but I feared I'd overwrite any data that might be saved.
Since I could not get into XP with this drive attached, I could not get into XP drive management.
So is this HD fried? Or are certain sectors of the OS corrupted? Anyone have any insights from the above info? Is there a way to get my PC to boot with this drive attached? I've heard it's not a good idea to plug a drive in when the PC is already on. Any suggestions for other tests/approaches? What do data recovery services
Thanks!!