Extracting data from hard drive

[MikeyE]

The situation is I need to get some important files from the hd of a friend's dead machine. Can't do it on my laptop of course so I'm stuck using my parent's really old Radio Shack purchased Compaq piece of crap.

I was hoping this would be as easy as taking the drive from the dead machine, setting it to slave and plugging it into IDE channel 2 on the Compaq.

Tried that and it won't boot. Goes through BIOS then just sits there with a cursor blinking on a black screen.

I ensured that the Compaq's working hard drive is set to Master. Actually without the slave drive installed it works just fine. Just when i plug in the slave drive it won't boot.

Looked through the BIOS settings (some proprietary Compaq written bios) and can't see anything that would prevent a slave drive from working.

I suppose I could get an external hard drive carrier and do it that way with my laptop but I was hoping to get these files tonight, it's pretty important.

 

[Alvin.C]

Re:

Hello,

Make sure that if you've set the original drive to master, and the secondary drive to slave, that they are plugged into the corresponding master IDE and slave IDE connectors.

Next, try going into BIOS and check to see if the drive is detected and configured.

Also, if the secondary drive is detected, check the boot order to ensure that the primary drive is set as the primary boot device.

 

[MikeyE]

Thanks Alvin C.

I verified the above settings. The BIOS options are very limited on this p.o.s. but the drive appears to be detected on boot up.

I actually have the CD-ROM set as the first boot device so maybe that's a problem. I'll give it a shot

 

[RicoDirenzo]

If it a really old machine, the ide config may not support the boot for that larger DMA HD, that is if it is Ultra DMA 66 or higher, that old compac willnot read that new hard drive. You might need to buy an external USB HD enclosure and pull the data to your laptop that way. You can buy one on Newegg for not too much and then you'll have the enclosure for use with you laptop for addtional storage and back up (which you need anyway).

 

[MikeyE]

Ok, disregard. I got it to work now. Not sure what I did different this time, just gave it another shot and i can read all the data on the drive. Phew! Thanks anyways for your help.

Now due to the lack of a CD burner i just have to hook up my external usb hard drive, transfer the files, hook the drive to my laptop then burn 'em.

Thanks again!