Do I need to transfer HD files with emachine mobo change?

I am trying to fix my friends dead Emachine. I replaced the power supply and am now working on the mobo. I have read that if you put a different mobo in an emachine that you would lose info and have to get another copy of operating system. Would this also cause all of the personal files from the hard drive to be lost as well? I tried to add the emachine HDD to my computer, but it always says "drive read error" upon booting. This happens if I add it as a slave or if I remove my hard drive and try to boot up with just the emachine HDD set as master. So, hoping the files will remain. But, if not, how do I get the files transferred when I cannot boot mycomputer with her hard drive? My bios is recognizing both drives, so not sure where the problem lies. Thanks.

 

Have you tried looking in (right click my computer, click manage, then Disk management, to see if you can read it from there.

 

That was with the drive connected as slave, or, no jumpers,to your computer, reading from your hard drive ?

 

I had the emachine HDD jumpers set as slave and I do not get far enough after turning on the computer to even see the Windows logo let alone get into "my computer" . As soon as the computer shows me my bios information is says "drive read error" and prompts me to ctrl+alt+delete to restart. It is a viscious circle:cry . I am not really sure about my HDD jumpers. I had the choice of master, no slave;cable select; or one other I can't remember and one jumper unlabeled. I tried each one with the same results except when I used cable select, it recognized my HDD as the slave.

 

On the top of the hard drive, it usually has little diagrams, otherwise near the rear pins, where the jumpers go to tell you master, slave, or select.
When you start up,with cable select, go into the bios, and you will find the hard drives listed .
Try changing the the drives select to use yours as master.
Sorry got to go, i will look in tommorrow.

 

I did this. My bios show my HDD as master and the emachine HDD as slave. But I still get the drive read error after I leave the bios.

 

Will the computer start, from your hard drive, while the other is connected this way?
Incidently, Microsoft can be pretty lenient, if you try connecting the hard drive, to the old computer with the new motherboard, and it fires up, then from the screen, numbers, they MAYallow a fresh install over the phone.
If you cannot read the old hard drive, from the management console, there might be work to do with the hard drive.
With your computer, the XP on the old disk will not work, but if it is as a seperate partition, and the hard drive is o.k, then you can usually copy some files onto your disk, but you may have to work at it a bit, to get to those files.

 

I tried booting up my computer with the emachine HDD as master by itself and I still get the disk read error directly after it goes through its bios settings. Is there anyway to get the files (not operating system) off this HDD? If microsoft allowed a re-install, wouldn't that erase all the personal files as well?

 

Could you start, and get into Windows, from your hard drive, when emachine hard drive was atatched, or, did it just throw up error, and not start Windows?
Otherwise you seem to have a corrupted hard drive, from the e-machine , and, unless you can read it from your machine, as the other motherboard has gone, it will not be easy.
I will give it more thoght, and come back to you.

 

Sorry to butt in bak old Chap

Jess ,post the exact sequence of events leading to the read ewrror and the exact words of the error please.


Studio T

 

The free super fdisk from majorgeeks downlods, might have helped if the disk was still in the old computer, I don't know if it would help here, but it might , if you try it in your computer, on its own, to see if you can get to the Windows blue screen, then connect it as slavve to your drive, as before, and see if you can take pictures etc; of to your hard drive.
http://www.majorgeeks.com/Super_Fdisk_d4985.html
Otherwise here is a list to work your way through, but I think they modtly rely on the disk being in the original computer.

NFTS RECOVERY
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/121517/EN-US/

NFTS BOOTSECTOR RECOVERY
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/153973/EN-US/

SCROLL DOWN PAGE FOR A LIST OF RECOVERY OPTIONS
http://shsc.info/DataRecovery


http://www.data-recovery-software.net/--- RECOMMENDEDR-STUDIO 5

 

Come on in Studiot, the waters warm, and it is always appreciated, I want to watch Newcastle in a little while

 

How pathetic...I plugged the emachine HDD in again the exact way I have tried about 5 times and it worked. I was just trying to get the exact sequence of events leading up to my drive read error. So sorry to have wasted everyones time. I did enjoy the computer chat though. Thank you!!

 

I don't have much information about your sytem or the dead Emachine so I will try to work logically through the possibilities.

Firstly it is possible that whatever event caused the psu failure also caused more damage in the Emachine. In particular to the hard drive. This could give rise to the error message that you are seeing. In this case only a specialist recovery company or the manufacturer would have the resources to extract anything from the drive and it would be very expensive.

Secondly the drive could be OK but there could be an incompatibility with your bios because the drive is too large. This could arise if your bios is a few years old.

Thirdly there could be a wiring problem. Emachines normally set their drives to cable select, even though there is only one! The normal jumpers on a drive are for master, slave, cable select and a parking position to store the jumper if not in use. Some older drives have a second master position for use when there is a second (slave) drive present. Some drives have a position to limit the reported size, or data arrangement,to the bios, to prevent incompatibility with an older bios.
If you use cable select you have to have a cable select data cable. Unfortunately there are three types of ribbon cable select data cables. So if in doubt use the master /slave arrangement.
There are also two standards of ribbon for m/s and c/s. 40wire and 80 wire. the newer 80 wire will always work the older 40 wire may work with the drives. A system expecting to use cable select will designate the middle connector as the slave and the end connector as the master. A disk read error will result if the jumpers on the drives do not match this, so try connecting the drives to the other connectors. You may get the emachines drive to function as a slave or even master on the secondary IDe, with your CD, or instead of your CD.


Studio T

 

Jess1rph, Pleased to know you have succeeded, but it would be appreciated if you told us how you connected, and in which machine, for others who might have been reading this thread, and for us.

 

It's very easy to have one of the ribbon connectors a bit loose when you thought you had pushed them firmly home. We've all done it.
Never mind all's well now.

Studio T