Retrieving info off of crashed hard drive!!!!

Hello....again!! I hate to keep repeatedly posting new threads here...but I'm trying something for a friend here in order to save him some money!! Even if he did know how to do this forum stuff...he wouldn't know how to follow any instructions you gave him!!!

So anyway....His hard drive crashed. We kind of thought at first that the boot sector was damaged....(this is Windows 2000 professional that he has here)...Being that unfortunately he doesn't have an ERD...I thought maybe if I take a completely different drive and installed Windows 2000 on it, so that we could atleast use the computer...then put the bad drive in as a slave and hopefully be able to use the new windows installation in order to see the stuff on the slave drive!! Then I would copy so stuff off of it onto the partitions thvt I created on the new drive specifically for that purpose!! That's all well and good, except...when I put the bad drive in as the slave....the windows bootup on the good drive hangs on start up...right at the point of the Windows 2000 Professional splash, and the blue progress indicator stop at about half way!! But when I take out the bad drive...the new install starts up just fine. I thought at first that it was because the bad drive wasn't even spinning but I can hear it hitting when I try to boot up the bad drive by itself as a single (master) drive, and I can feel it spinning when I tough it!!

I know there are drive recovery people out there, but that can get pretty costly!! SO we are exhausting all other possibilities before he sends it off to one of them!! But he has to get this information, so any help is greatly appreciated!!!!

any ideas??

Thanks
Roger

 

have you checked your bios settings, to see if there is anything there you should change? what was your jumper on originally? my compaq computer doesn't like master/slave configuration, i had to leave it on "cs" which is what the main h/d was (slave on cs also). you might want to try that? below is a thread that i had started, but see if it has anything that can help (look at the pics as well). I have found PC Inspector (link below), to be fairly easy to run (works great)!! also, you should be able to try and access your (his) drive from another computer (maybe xp)? g/l - sos

if you get it booted up with both drives in there, see if you can access your drive through explorer. if you aren't able to, are they both listed in device manager? what does it look like in computer management (control panel --> Administrative Tools --> Computer Management --> (left side) Disk Management

http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=57595

http://www.pcinspector.de/file_recovery/UK/welcome.htm <-- PC Inspector

 

Excellent....I see we are on the same page here!!!!

I bookmarked the pcinspector link!! That is excellent!!!!

Even though I'm pretty sure I've already done that...I will try the cmos reset thing again. However I am not having any trouble getting the bios to see any of the three drives (1 good and the 2 bad ones)!! I have tried the jumper thing but i'll play with it again!! That was kind of what I figured it to be, but I just can't seemed to get everything lined out right!! Ofcourse...last night when I was playing with this...I looked at this crap sooooo long I became cross eyed, so I might accomplish something if I play with it while i've got a fresh mind!!

I'll keep you posted...and if you come up with any other thought...let me know!!

Roger

 

yeh, i've been slowly (couple of weeks now) getting all of my stuff off of there (2nd drive), but now i'm just going for it (trying to finish)!! this newer version of pc inspector is a little bit easier (user friendly), than the last version. anyway, if you have any questions about it, just drop a line here. - sos

 

Excellent....I got it!!! I can now see the everything through the My Computer on the good drive!! Only thin now though....got to figure out where this backup file is under quickbook!!

Correct me if i'm wrong...but shouldn't you be able to just paste and copy the files off of the bad drive, and put it on the new drive??

Roger

 

so, was it just a jumper setting on the h/d?

if you are able to access your h/d then you can just cut and paste (thru explorer). if yours is like mine (got corrupted), i can't access it through explorer.
so, i'm having to use recovery software to get at it. - sos

 

I think it might have been related to the reseting the cmos battery!! I don't know...after I did that I made sure the jumpers were where I wanted them, and it started up!!

I did paste everything into the new drive!! However...just to make sure that I have all my bases covered...I most importantly...need to recover a quickbook file! Unfortunately....I can't see the contents of that file, unless I can get into quickbook!! That being the case...is there any way I can reinstall quickbook off of the bad drive onto the new drive!!!????

Roger