Hardrive boot problem

[EMestizo23]

A buddy of mine gave me his hard drive so I could copy all the files off of it. I tried to boot from several different pc's with it being the only hard drive in, and everytime I get:

Invalid Boot Diskette
Insert BOOT diskette in A:

I've tried booting up with another hard drive, and it works, but once I'm on, it doesn't recognize the hard drive I'm trying to copy files from...like it's not even there. It's running windows 98, and I've tried using a windows 98 boot disk, and it boots, but it tries to reinstall the whole operating system. It gives me the option to save files before installation, but it gives me the prompt:

win98:\

...and it doesn't seem to let me go anywhere.
I've read places that the bios could be messed up, but if that's the case, how can I change those or get it so I can boot up again? If anyone has any suggestions or ideas it would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Lostman]

Did you set the second hard drive jumpers to slave before you connected it to the same IDE cable as your primary hard drive?

 

[fiezk]

Follow Lostmans advice and connect both your old and your new hard drive (the old set as master, the new as slave) and try again. Search online for pin settings.

Placing a hard drive with an os allready installed into a completely different system (different mobo, video card etc.) usually causes problems. But if your system doesn't eaven find it, it's probably set to slave.

 

[EMestizo23]

I did change the jumpers to slave. That's when it would boot off the other drive, but not recognize the one I needed. I actually changed the those settings around a bunch of different ways to see if one worked, but it didn't...

 

[fiezk]

Are they connected to the same ide cable?

 

[CrashAbbott]

Actually,, If you take the HDD and put it into another machine,, Prior to doing so,, you go into the "etc" and clear the enum folder,,,

once the drive is in the new Machine,, it will auto discover all the PnP gear in the box,,

Just have the drivers ready,,

in 5 minits youre up and running,,

cheers,,

There is obviously something more to this equation than is in the post,,

What type of drive are we talking here,, and does it have more than one Jumper on it,, Like fujitsu,, and some seagates??

plus,, is this drive damaged by chance? The reason your buddy gave it to you?

cheers,

 

[EMestizo23]

Thanks for all the advice, I'll give it a shot...