Hard drive issue?

[Sprinklerman]

I found this site yesterday because I am looking to build a cpu soon. Well it may be sooner than I planned. I had an old 1998 hard drive on a computer. I wanted to see if I could use it on my newer desktop as a slave drive.

Well I set the jumper to slave and plugged it in and tried to boot up. Now I get a screen message saying "Operating system not found." Oops! What happened? How can I get my system back up now or can I? I have unplugged the old drive and back to original now. Still the same thing.

I guess it is not as easy as I thought. Can I be helped?:confused:

Thanks,
Michael

[Rob]

Hi, Michael, and welcome.

It should be safe to hook up your old hard drive as a slave. If I understand right then you are trying to get your original configuration to work again on your old computer. When you put your old hard drive back in your old computer, did you restore the jumper setting? Does it show up now in the BIOS of the old computer?

[Sprinklerman]

Thanks for the quick reply.

I am trying to use my old HD in my newer XP OS computer as a slave. I just found my newer HD jumper was not in master mode and now it is. My old HD is in slave mode and all is hooked up again.

It still says "Operating system not found" when I boot up.

I did get the BIOS window to pop up, but only if I leave the floppy drive unplugged so the system finds it as an error. Otherwise it goes straight to the black window with, "Operating system not found" on it.

With the BIOS window open it does have my older HD as the primary slave, but when I exit it goes back to the black window and doesn't start.

[Sprinklerman]

I forgot to mention. I thought the CPU was off, but it was on standby. Could this have effected the existing HD by not having the CPU shut down?

Could the motherboard be shorted because of this?

Thanks for the help.

[The Wise Monkey]

You may be in a spot of bother there...

Try reversing the roles - set your old HD as the master, and the other as the slave.

[Cirndle]

IM guesing it is more of putting your old hd in as slave, and not having it set as slave with the newer one at least as far as bios is concerned.

I did this one, and people told me it is the worst thing to do is set another hd as a primary even on accident. What probably happened, is is your old hd formated clean or does it have stuff on it? Because since it was installed as master hd on accident, then Windows probably changed its letter to C:, and the newer hd to like D: or something.


Try switching the cables around, i mean slave to newer hd, and old hp on primary, maybe it will search for c, and find the newer one thinking it is the old one.

Or go into bios and diasble your slave. Reformat, windows recovery on disk (i hate it) boot disk, change the boot.ini information.


Hope you can figure it out i just reformatted and my windows cd wouldn't work past fresh install copy of windows xp pro press enter to conitnue for like two days. Then I got it all down, and installed 3 windows optional updates, and it made my computer restart in a loop after about 15seconds in to desktop, but I rolledback some drivers, and used last know configuration settings and it worked.

Firefox is amazing with PC mags utilities of the month. (all free of course.)

[Sprinklerman]

Thanks for all the tips. It is not looking good. Nothing has worked so far to bring it back alive.

Is there even hope that another working computer could get anything off of the HD ?

How do I know if the HD even still works after this? Is it fried?

How do I know that the motherboard didn't take a hit from this?


I can't even get the bios to come up unless I have the diskett drive unplugged.

Thanks,
Michael

[Cirndle]

well if bios comes up with diskette your mobo should be okay look for leaking capacitors and scourch marks. Do a hd diagnostics on it through bios floppy.

If code 7 then it is done for.

You can try wrapping your hd in an antistatic bag, then in a 1 gallon zip lock bag sealing the bags in eachother zip on outside antistatic on inside, and put your hd in the freezer for like 4hours and putting it back in and trying to get the information off of it fast.

Heard it has worked for some havent got to test it.

[Sprinklerman]

I tried the XP boot disk.

Got the error code 7.

It looks like I will be getting a new drive and then try to save what I can on the old one.

Thanks for all the help.

[The Wise Monkey]

You can try wrapping your hd in an antistatic bag, then in a 1 gallon zip lock bag sealing the bags in eachother zip on outside antistatic on inside, and put your hd in the freezer for like 4hours and putting it back in and trying to get the information off of it fast.

Heard it has worked for some havent got to test it.

That is a tried and tested method - works brilliantly! The number of times I've managed to recover HDs long enough to get the data out by cooling them down...

Another useful tip - if you ever spill water on any electrical equipment, put it in your airing cupboard for 24 hours. Managed to save my phone after a friend dropped it in the sea!