Hard Drive gone bust.

FastFullBack · 22-06-2005 1:40pm #1

Hi,

I've got a old 4GB hard drive which I believe has "gone bust".
My BIOS reads it, but when I set this as the only hard drive and as the master the operating system installed on it won't load.

When I set it as a slave and loads Windows from my new hard drive I can see the older drive(

\ )

However when I click it, it says that it's not formatted and asks to do it now.

It's has all the signs that the data on it is gone for good?

Any chance I could save it, as there alot music on it that I'd like to keep.

Thanks
Tim

hostyle · 22-06-2005 1:43pm

What version of Windows are you using? What are the disks formatted as (if you know) - FAT32 / NTFS ?

FastFullBack · 22-06-2005 1:45pm

The version of Windows on the old hard drive is Windows 98.
Not too sure of the formatt type, I'd think it'd be FAT32 with WIN98.

I've currently got WINDOWS ME on my new HD and will be upgrading to XP soon.

Thanks

CyberGhost · 22-06-2005 2:15pm

have you tried changing the ide cable and trying again?

FastFullBack · 22-06-2005 2:18pm

Well I can, but would that make any difference?
The IDE cable I'm using came new with my new motherboard.

vibe666 · 23-06-2005 7:39am

try it on different cables and different ide ports. sometimes older drives can be a little fussy.

partition recovery tools might be your best bet though, although you'll need a seperate drive to restore the data to.

FastFullBack · 27-06-2005 2:08pm

vibe666 wrote:

try it on different cables and different ide ports. sometimes older drives can be a little fussy.

partition recovery tools might be your best bet though, although you'll need a seperate drive to restore the data to.

Can you recommend and recovery tools that might be free?

I've seen a couple of goods one alright but not many free.

Alvis · 27-06-2005 2:14pm

Maybe a boot from Knoppix and see if your music is still there?

FastFullBack · 27-06-2005 2:17pm

Alvis wrote:

Maybe a boot from Knoppix and see if your music is still there?

Sorry what is Knoppix?

CyberGhost · 27-06-2005 6:02pm

it's a linux operating system that runs from a CD-Rom

Alvis · 27-06-2005 10:59pm

Sorry I wasn't that clear in the last post. (I was in a hurry

)

If you boot from Knoppix, it might be able to acccess some of your files on the malfunctioning hard drive.
Here are some mirrors where you can get it
http://www.knopper.net/knoppix-mirrors/index-en.html

When it's downloaded it's an ISO image. Use a program such as Burn4Free, Nero or Alcohol 120% to burn it onto a blank CD-R.

Upon boot, make sure you make your BIOS boot from the CD instead of the hard drive. Knoppix will boot and it loads itself entirely from the CD so it doesn't write to any hard drive. Hopefully if your drive is detected it would be on the Knoppix desktop and you can copy the contents of it to another drive, onto a CD, or onto removeable media using Knoppix.

Good luck!

Hard Drive gone bust.

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