recover from my near-dead hard disk to new one

I will try to be as detailed as possible.

My first 80GB Excelstor (IDE) hard drive has almost died. Now I have bought a Hitachi 160GB drive for a replacement.

I am a little new to installing hard drives but I have been reading many faqs about how to set them up.

Now my problem is that the guy at the computer shop said that it's possible for me to recover data from my old drive as it hasn't completely died yet. I have been trying to connect it.

I have connected it as the master and both drives show up but I can't get into windows on my new drive (the computer stops and I don't have a choice of whether to use windows on the hitachi or the excelstor).

When I switch the black and gray and the computer is rebooted the computer doesn't detect either drive in the bios. I get gibberish.

I have been trying to figure out the pins. I have the hitachi set to master and I am a little scared to move them around. The excelstor I cannot find the jumper settings. It looks like they are on the back of the drive though.

Can someone give me ideas or suggestions on what I am doing wrong? I would really appreciate it.

The drives are:

Hitachi Deskstar 160GB IDE
Excelstor 80GB IDE (I cannot tell which model)

Thanks

 

Are you trying to recover everything from old hard drive, including OS? Do you have the software to reload Operating system on new hard drive? Do you have the software from the major programs that you had installed on old drive?

 

I only have some files to recover from the old hard drive. I don't care about programs. Only some pictures and document files.

I have already installed the OS onto the new drive. With the old drive I cannot get into Windows. It will start to load and that's it.

 

I can get the system to detect the drive.

I have the hitachi set to master and everything goes smooth until just after the windows screen. That is when I get a black screen and you can hear the old drive humming... un un un un....... un un un un.

After that point the computer goes nowhere and I am not able to save the precious few files I want.

Any ideas on what I can do or try?

 

Did both your drives show correctly in the BIOS? If you are using one data cable to connect both your drives, please make sure the jumper setting of your old hard disk drive is set to Slave as the new one is already set to Master from you described. You may refer to its installation guide http://www.excelstor.com/soft/9100revE.pdf for detailed jumper settings.

If the drive can be displayed in your operating system, you may install a data recovery software in your new drive, then access the data in the old one. A free trial version can be found on http://download.ontrack.com/freedownloads/ERPROT_610.exe