HD data recovery question

Morning - I have a HD from a dell dimension 4400 that I am not really sure if it is crashed or not - so what I did is I took it out of the 4400. I then went to my working dell L866r and disconnected the CD drive and hooked up the 4400 HD. It booted up and when I went into my computer to see if it recognized it - it did not, it only showed the floppy A drive. So, what I need to know is where in the BIOS do I go to, to see if in fact the L866r recognizes the 4400 HD? I hope this makes sense :-o Thanks in advance for any and all help!! KathyM

 

So the 4400 HD is on its own data cable and power plug is connected.
Try right-clicking My Computer and select Manage in the right hand pane select Disk Management is there a Disk 1?

 

I disconnected the CDRom and hooked it up to the 4400 HDD. I followed your instructions and it did not show a disk 1.

I went into the BIOS and in the boot section here is what is listed:

1st Boot Device - Floppy
2nd " " - ARMD-FDD
3rd " " - IDE-HDD
4th " " -Atapi-CDROM
5th " " - disabled

what I would like to know is how do I find out in the bios if my system (Dell Dimension L866r) is recognizing that I have hooked up the 4400 HDD in place of the CDROM? thanks in advance! KathyM

 

IT looks like F2 immediately when starting then Drive Configuration look at Secondary Master. Does it list HDD?

Check your jumper on the 4400 HD. There should be a diagram on the label. Is it set for Cable Select or Master. Master would be best.

 

Secondary master shows "not installed" I have it hooked up to the other computer and cant check it - but it was the master HDD in the 4400...

My other question is how do I find out if autodetect is enabled in the BIOS? I cant find it.....

I am going to disconnect the 4400 HDD and check to see the jumper selection....brb

 

ok - I'm back. I unplugged the 4400HDD and it appears that the jumpers are set to cable select and not master......now what?

 

Just so we are on the same page. You have your dell L866r with its HD in place as Primary master and the 4400 connected to the CDROM cable in the L866r as Secondary Master. We are only working on one computer here with two HDs attached.

 

Change the jumper to Master. You may need tweezers to grab hold of it. For some reason Cable select isn't always recognized even though it should be.

 

yes to the L866r
4400 connected to the cdrom cable in the L866r as "nothing".....
yes, one computer 2 HD's

and how do I make the 4400 a secondary master????

 

If you missed my post above. You would move the jumper according to the diagram on the label.

 

ok - got your post.....I am going to change the jumper to master - and what do I do in the BIOS?

 

You shouldn't have to do anything. Once the jumper is changed you could check Drive Configuration to see if it is recognized. Or just start Windows and check My Computer for the drive.

 

ok - I am going to do that right now and post back......thanks!

 

Absolutely nothing!!!!!! It is only recognizing A: and C:......what am I missing??? Shouldn't I get an error or something?

 

What was the original problem with the drive when it was in the 4400? Could the HD be completely dead?

I guess you could on the L8866r--unplug both HDs. Connect only the old 4400 HD to the Primary Master cable and try to start. Windows won't load because the OS was installed on a different computer but you could see if the HD is recognized. This would tell you if the HD is dead.

 

OK- I have an extra IDE cable that came out of the 4400. It has 3 connectors, blue for the MOB black for the HDD and the 3rd is grey. What would happen if I took that IDE cable and hooked it up to the good HD and then took the grey connector and hooked it up to the bad HD after I slave it?

 

Brief synopsis - computer was running fine....got a pop-up error message saying to reboot....rebooted and got a black screen and the error was boot failure: system halted....I did the boot from cd - recovery - followed all the steps that I was given from here....what I need is just to recover the data off it....

 

Probably the same thing. You would have to change the jumper on the 4400HD to slave and put it on the middle connector. Put the working L8866HD on the non-motherboard end.

***
As far as I can tell you are not missing anything. Slaving a drive should be simple. If the drive is not powering up at all you would get no errors like you are now. Jumper misconfiguration would give similar no errors but I think you have done that correctly. Sometimes letting a failing HD rest/cool down gives you a chance to get data off of it when you try again later.

 

Now if I connect the old HDD and even though you said it wont load windows because the OS is different....it wont fry my MOB will it??? And if it wont load windows how would I be able to tell if it is dead or not? get the boot failure:system halted message again?

 

Won't hurt your MB.

Check the drive configuration in Bios and see if it is listed as Primary Master. If it isn't listed then BIOS can't see the drive. I can't see any other reason it wouldn't be recognized other than it not powering up. [Assuming the jumper is set to Master]

 

I have disconnected the bad HDD...now I know from when I was in the BIOS that the primary master is recognized and that the IDE controller is set to "both" for auto. So I am going to take the good HD out and make sure the jumper is set to master and then I am going to set the jumper on the bad HD to slave and then take my IDE cable and hook them both up.....then we shall see what happens! Will post the results.....

 

OK- i hooked up both HD's - booted to windows and when I went into disk mgmt there was only C and E.

Then I rebooted and went into the BIOS - went to advanced and the IDE configuration is:
P IDE Master - not installed
P IDE Slave - not installed
S IDE Master - CRD8482B
S IDE Slave - not installed


Then I disconnected the bad HD and just rebooted the good HD and went into setup.....in advanced went to IDE Config again - here is what was listed:

P IDE Master - Maxtor 32049H2
P IDE Slave - not installed
S IDE Master - CRD8482B
S IDE Slave - not installed

(IDE cable is brand new from Dell)

OK - truly....is there something that I am missing?? It is weird that I can feel a vibration from the bad HD which is the same vibration from the good HD......What else is there for me to do????? Thanks again for all your help and assistance with my dilema

 

S IDE Master- CRD8482B is your CDROM drive which I guess you left connected.

****
It looks like a jumper problem to me. Are you using the jumper diagram for the 4400 from its label? What is the model of HD from the label?

*******
I still think a quick connection of only the 4400 set as master on the Primary cable will tell you something if you look in IDE config. It should give you the model number if recognized.

 

I've had similar problem with a couple of hdds.

I think I've come to the conclusion they are fried but could work to sort out whether your 4400 hdd is fried.

This is what I tried:

Method 1 -

Made a self boot floppy with HDClone.

It doesn't matter which machine you run it on, and it probably doesn't matter what the jumper settings are, but would be nice if they're correct.

I would set one as slave on the secondary cable.

Insert the HDClone floppy and turn on the machine, and follow through with the prompts, it'll tell you the hdds it recognizes - check to see if they're the right size. Don't worry about the actual cloning, it takes several prompts before you get to it.

Method 2 -

Make a self boot CDRom with HDD Scan and Restoration available under "Data Recovery" files. You do this connecting only one hdd to the computer at a time.

Set the jumper to master for the 4400 hdd.

You can test the 4400 hdd on the 4400 computer as the CD will self boot. Select the scan option (first on the list) and see if a hard disk is found. If not, it's probably fried. You can also try the L866r hdd on the 4400 computer if you want to be sure.

Or vice versa and test both hdd on the L866r computer - again one hdd at a time.

****

What I found out with my hdd experience is the HDClone seem better at recognizing hdds.

 

Morning - ok, what is a HDClone floppy???

 

sorry I didn't get back to you last night but I had to go out for a bit....

Anyway, yes I left the good HD connected. Yes, I used the jumper diagram from the 4400 which is on the label. Now if I just connect the 4400 to the primary cable and NOT have the good HD hooked up will it fry or mess up my L866r mob??

 

No, it won't do any damage to the motherboard. It will eliminate bad cable or bad jumper settings. It's a quick check of the HD on a known working PC. No different than connecting as a slave.

 

OK - how will I know if anything is bad? what type of error message or message will I get?

 

Bios

 

ok - I will give it a shot and post back in about an hr......have to run q quick errand.....

 

Hopefully you've gotten things sorted out.

If not and you want to try HDClone, go to:

http://www.miray.de/products/sat.hdclone.html

download HDClone and make a self boot floppy. You can use the free version just to check if it is recognized and the hdd capacity.