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Hard Drive Help

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by deano65

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My PC crashed. To make a long story short my old WD IDE hard drive is not functioning and when placed on the IDE cable as master, slave, or cable select it won't allow my computer to boot. I have changed the bios settings on the new mother board for the sectors, etc... I have tried with a new hard drive and on a secondary IDE. The computer doesn't recognize the secondary. The good news I backed up important info, the bad news; that cd is corrupted and I can't get to the info so I need to get info off of my HD. Please help. Be gentle I have enough knowledge to be fairly dangerous.

3 replies

by mukom_tamon

You probably have a dead hard drive. Replace the IDE cable and try again and if it doesn't work. then try this techrepublic trick. Wrap the hard drive in water-proof bag and freeze it for about 20 to 30 minutes. Remove it and immediately put it as a slave on a new system. Be sure that your current OS has supports the file system on the dead hd. Good luck

by dmiles

First partition and format the new hard drive,then install the new drive as master,then the old drive as slave and see if you can load the data from the old drive to the new one

The other option is to check techrepublic site for 200 ways to recover a hard drive

by csmith

This problem usually is the circuit board, (or the 5 Volt pin connection is broken, not common)
The solution is to swap boards. OUCH!
Finding a old board is a challenge.
The best solution is probably to go to cnet.com and download the cd recovery software. (Free Download)
This program was just introduced last week, and I have not had time to try it ,yet.
I say this, because all of the other options are not good. (Expensive/TimeConsuming.)
Regards, Chris

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