slaving hdd to recover data

[J MAN]

I have a Gateway computer P4 1.5ghz 256 ram with windows
XP Home (OEM). System crashed and won't boot. Can't get
safemode or last config. I have OEM disk and can boot to
windows setup, but I don't have the "Repair installation"
option (by pressing R after eula). I have data I need to
recover and I don't know how. I have been watching your
forum for a few weeks, and have followed many of the
suggestions given, but no luck. The suggestion of
replacing hard drive and slaving the old drive has come
up, but being sort of a novice at this, don't know how.
So my questions are: how can I tell if my drive is my
problem (tried to run drive mfrs utility but no boot no
go). If I install a new drive, how do I slave the old
one, and will that allow access to data on old drive? If
you can"t answer, could you point me in the direction to
find this info. Thank You

 

[Malke]

I have a Gateway computer P4 1.5ghz 256 ram with windows
XP Home (OEM). System crashed and won't boot. Can't get
safemode or last config. I have OEM disk and can boot to
windows setup, but I don't have the "Repair installation"
option (by pressing R after eula). I have data I need to
recover and I don't know how. I have been watching your
forum for a few weeks, and have followed many of the
suggestions given, but no luck. The suggestion of
replacing hard drive and slaving the old drive has come
up, but being sort of a novice at this, don't know how.
So my questions are: how can I tell if my drive is my
problem (tried to run drive mfrs utility but no boot no
go). If I install a new drive, how do I slave the old
one, and will that allow access to data on old drive? If
you can"t answer, could you point me in the direction to
find this info. Thank You

First, what do you mean by "no boot no go" for the hard drive diagnostic
utility? Assuming you made a bootable floppy with the utility, did you
set your computer to boot from the floppy drive? You do this by
entering the BIOS setup and changing the boot order. To enter the BIOS,
look at the bottom of the screen as your computer starts up. There
should be a prompt that says something like "F2 for setup". If the
startup screen is covered by the Gateway logo, try pressing Tab or Esc
to see the information. I think the correct key for Gateway is F2, but
I may be wrong. You will need to check. Once in the BIOS setup, find
the entry for boot order.

Here is how to slave the hard drive in another computer:

We'll call this drive "drive.old" and the target drive "target.drive".
Turn off both computers, and then take drive.old out of its computer,
gently removing the ribbon cable and power connector. Handle hard
drives carefully, and try not to touch any exposed circuit boards. Look
at drive.old - between the connectors for the ribbon cable and power is
a small section with little pins. There will be a tiny plastic
rectangle covering some of the pins. This is called a "jumper" and is
used to set the drive's status to master, slave, or cable select. The
easiest thing to do is to remove the ribbon cable from the cd drives in
the new computer and connect drive.old to one of the connectors on that
cable. If you do this, you won't need to change the jumpers on
drive.old. Be sure to plug in a power connector to drive.old. Turn on
target.drive's computer. If you've done everything right, then
drive.old will show up in the BIOS and then in Windows. You can then
drag and drop your data from drive.old to the place of your choice on
target.drive. When you are finished, shut down the computer and reverse
your steps. This procedure is actually very easy and doesn't take long
to do.

Post back to this thread if you need more help.

Malke

 

[Rich Barry]

You may be able to do a Repair Install of XP with the OEM XP Disk.
Check here
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm

It's probably not a failure of your hard drive though it's a
possiblity. If you could use a friends computer and connect
your drive as slave to his drive or master on the secondary Ide
channel that would be a way to recover your data.
You could then format and reinstall XP. Here is a website on
adding and changing drives.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=/directory/worldwide/en-gb/harddrive.asp

 

[J MAN]

To Malke: I am not exactly how to make a "bootable"
floppy. I downloaded the utility and put it on floppy.
Is this how? If not could you please expand on
proceedure? To Rich: Followed Mr. Stevens' article step
by step but apparently I don't have the option
to "repair" without losing data. Will check your link
out. If I install a second drive, will I be able to
access the data on it?

 

[Malke]

To Malke: I am not exactly how to make a "bootable"
floppy. I downloaded the utility and put it on floppy.
Is this how? If not could you please expand on
proceedure? To Rich: Followed Mr. Stevens' article step
by step but apparently I don't have the option
to "repair" without losing data. Will check your link
out. If I install a second drive, will I be able to
access the data on it?

I'm sorry I wasn't more exact about the bootable floppy. No, you
download the file for the utility to somewhere you'll find it, like the
Desktop. Then you double-click it and it will start a "wizard" that
will tell you to insert a floppy in the A: drive and will then extract
its program and data to that floppy. *Now* you've got your bootable
floppy. When the utility setup executable is finished, you'll have a
command box (looks like a DOS box) that says it is finished and you can
exit it. Now take the floppy you just made to the sick computer and
boot with it. Run a thorough test on the drive.

If you install a second hard drive and do a Windows install, being
careful of course not to install on the wrong drive, if your old drive
is viable and can be seen in the BIOS, there is a good chance that it
will appear in your new Windows installation and you can copy files off
it. However, sometimes putting a damaged hard drive in a working XP box
as slave will cause the working XP not to boot. There is another way of
getting data off a drive, but its pretty geeky for someone who didn't
know how to make a bootable floppy. I don't say this to hurt your
feelings, but you know yourself best. Maybe you should just take the
machine to a good local shop (not a BestBuy or CompUSA type of store)
and have them rescue the data for you. Otherwise, here's my favorite
way:

If you have access to a machine with two cd drives, one of which is a
burner, go to www.knoppix.net and download the .iso for Knoppix, a
Linux distro that runs from cd. You will need a fast Internet
connection (Knoppix is around 650MB) and third-party burning software
like Nero that can create a bootable cd from the .iso image. Now take
your Knoppix cd to the sick pc (or slave the hard drive in a pc that
has two cd drives) and boot with it. After Knoppix is finished loading,
it will see the XP files and you can burn them to cd-r with the burning
program k3b.

Good luck and post back if you need more help,

Malke

 

[Dorian Gray]

Maybe this is worth an investment.
External hard drive via USB

http://www.thermaltake.com/accessories/enclosure/menu.htm

I use this unit as a giant installation CD,
80 Gig hard drive with all my software menue driven.

Hence, use it to save data first then as a tool.
It does not need to be turned on at startup.

Windows will load the drive any time.
Drive must be set to master.

My web page:
http://home.kooee.com.au/kingull/xp.html?

 

[Alex Nichol]

I have a Gateway computer P4 1.5ghz 256 ram with windows
XP Home (OEM). System crashed and won't boot. Can't get
safemode or last config. I have OEM disk and can boot to
windows setup, but I don't have the "Repair installation"
option (by pressing R after eula). I have data I need to
recover and I don't know how.

That implies that it cannot find an installation present, so cannot
offer to repair it. This *may* mean that the boot.ini file on the HD is
damaged, so there is no reference on where to look for Windows. It may
be of course that the damage is much worse. But try repairing that.
Boot the XP CD and, instead of Setup, take the immediate R for Repair.
Assume any password requested is blank, and TAB over.

Your CD will probably be seen there as D:; assuming that give these
commands:
COPY D:\i386\ntldr C:\
COPY D:\i386\ntdetect.com C:\
ATTRIB -H -R -S C:\boot,ini
(if it says it can't find the file skip the next one)
DEL C:\boot.ini
BootCfg /Rebuild
Fixboot
Fixmbr

Not all of which may be needed, but it's easier to do them all than have
to come back.
If the Windows folder can be got at on the HD that should put you in a
position to be able to do a repair install - or may even put things
right