IDE nightmare

H

Hagu13

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Hi All

Please help:
My daughter has a 2 year old Celeron. When it was built we moved the old IDE drives across from her old PC so she has an IDE DVD writer and 40GB IDE HDD running XP.
My machine was identical except I had a 120GB IDE (XP) and a SATA DVD-RW. Recently I added a 500GB SATA and installed Windows 7, and dual booted, then later I formatted the 120GB drive and used it for storage.

Now today I decided to clone the 40GB drive onto the 120GB drive for my daughter. Plugged it into her machine as slave and it hangs after PCI device detection. Tried all configs of masters, slaves, cable select, back to as found and PC will not go past that point. Tried 2 different IDE cables, no change. Have also cleared CMOS and played with BIOS settings but nothing.

Then moved across to my machine and tried IDE there. Same as daughter's machine- if an IDE drive is detected- either drive, either cable, master or slave, it hangs in the same spot.
I only have IDE drives available for that machine and can't afford SATA ATM. Also need to recover her data anyway.

Suggestions, please...
 
Before spending cash on a external enclosure, try boot the drive up by itself using a windows xp disk, then use the disk utility to delete the partition from the drive. If it still fails after that I think a hardware fault has been introduced in the trip between your pc and your daughter's pc. How old is the drive? Some of them have long warranties.
 
Thx for replies so far

No configuration of drives, jumpers or cables work in either PC, but my machine works fine if I unplug the IDE stuff.
No magnets involved- been nowhere near a subwoofer or anything else.

My current theory is that both cables (both oldish) are troublesome, so I'm going to try a new cable.
 
Nope, Obelix, not that.

Cables are the newer cable select type which can't go in upside down. They just aren't "new" as in bought today.

Also, I've now bought a new cable, and problem isn't solved. This means it needs to be something common to both PC's but which won't affect anything except IDE as my machine works fine, or both drives are toast.

How do I break both drives at the same time?
 
Ok new info

Daughters machine- IDE 40GB drive plus IDE CD/DVD drive (XP CD in drive)- boots as far as "hit any key to boot from CD" then crashes
EDIT: wasn't seeing keyboard. Now I am booting into XP CD correctly with 40GB drive connected.

Same machine- IDE CD/DVD drive only (XP CD in drive)- success!
 
Last edited:
Ok now booted into the XP CD with the 40GB drive connected

It sees a 4113MB Partition1 (unknown) and an unpartitioned space of 34049MB

Disk *was* one 40GB partition with a name, and about 2/3 full

Seems like the drive is usable but I'm not doing anything here that will lose the data. Any suggestions?
 
Ok, 120Gb drive did the same (4113Mb partition, rest of drive unpartitioned space)
As this was an empty drive, I'm installing XP on it and the machine will run.

But, I'm dead meat if I have to tell an 18 year old girl I've lost the photos of her boyfriend. How do I recover the data on this drive?
 
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Any Linux LiveCD should read the drive just fine.

Is your BIOS firmware up to date?
 
Thanks, Auriga

Got an Ubuntu live CD, expect this will do as well, but I'm useless with Linux

Assume I put live CD in CD, 40GB drive connected, then boot from CD.
Can I "fix" the drive or do I need to recover individual files to a flashy or external drive?
 
You NEVER work on a faulty/corrupted/damaged drive. Always create a image or just copy the files to another drive like an external or flashy as you said.
 
Ok cool, thanks Ponder

Thanks everyone for the help. Got the machine going with the 120GB drive, will recover the 40GB's data tomorrow.
 
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