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Xantom
02-04-10, 05:16 PM
I have a computer with 2 drives(IDE), Maxtor 60GB(Master) and Maxtor 120GB(Slave). XP home 32 bit installed and would no longer boot. The Windows boot screen would come up and then it would go into disk analysis mode. Soon the screen would fill with secotor(...) unreadable errors, one after another.

I pulled both drives and attempted to use a rosewill IDE converter to USB cable to attempt to remove his data. I have used this on many 2.5 and 3.5 drives successfully. My first attempt was on a 7 64bit machine, I can see my PC recognize both but when I look in Disk Management I can see them but I get a red mark where the drive is listed saying the drive is not initialized. I attempt to initialize, I was really unsure what this would do, but that does not work, saying the device is not ready. This true for both drives.

My second attempt was to connect to an XP machine first via USB, that PC would recognize them and say the device is ready to use, but I cannot view either drive in My Computer or in Disk Management. I then connected both drives via IDE cable internally, the drive containing the OS of that machine is connected via SATA. The computer will not boot, saying it cannot find a boot device. I scanned the bios to find settings to adjust but could not see anything that would help. However I noticed that the first boot HDD, was the Maxtor drive that I had just connected and not the SATA Seagate that contains that machines OS. I could not find any settings relative to the SATA drive or any way to adjust the boot sequence to boot from that drive. I also tried booting the machine and then connecting the drives power and IDE connections, no luck:)

I am attempting to get some pictures off of these drives and that's all. Any suggestions are appreciated.

tachi1247
02-04-10, 06:35 PM
there has to be a way in the bios to adjust which hdd to boot from. sometimes it is in a separate menu from where u pick the boot device sequence (usb-dvd-hdd).

Xantom
02-05-10, 07:12 AM
I will check again, I will post back if I find something...

Any other suggestions??

dorkbert
02-05-10, 03:14 PM
As you no doubt found out, the drive is shot. You can try booting Acronis Seagate Edition CD (download ISO from Seagate website) and see if you can clone the data, but don't hold your breath.

Xantom
02-05-10, 03:18 PM
That's pretty much what I was leaning towards but wasn't sure about both drives. Maybe he had a electrical surge or something. If I have an XP CD, can I put a new drive in for him, install the OS from my CD, and use his product key to activate it?