trying to boot up a possibly broken hd

elitebear4

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May 28, 2004

• Nov 26, 2004

• #1

recently i most likely fried my computer from a stupid mistake i made and i have to check and see if my harddrive is broken or not, because i probably might need some stuff inside of it. i want to try to boot it up on another computer

my brother told me this, although im not sure he is right about it. he says that trying to boot up a harddrive on a different computer as a secondary harddrive is dangerous, if the HD is broken. unfortunately, i dont have another crappy computer to put at risk by performing this procedure. i want to ask a person in my apartment (whom i am merely acquainted with) to try to boot it up and i dont want any trouble.

is there a danger in doing this, or is my brother just full of balogna?

 

greywood

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Aug 4, 2002

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Blue Bell, Pa

• Nov 26, 2004

• #2

Assuming you are talking about putting your 'possibly-broke' drive in another comp as a
slave drive, then your brother is carrying around a big sandwich.

I did exactly that a couple days ago, with no probs for either the other comp or the drive.
(See my thread 'Afraid my hard-drive is going south...).

If you can at least read files off it, then backup everything vital, to another HDD or to CD's.

Good Luck.

 

A

Ascii2

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Nov 5, 2004

• Nov 26, 2004

• #3

elitebear4 said:

is there a danger in doing this, or is my brother just full of balogna?

Click to expand...

Yes a danger exists; if a procedure is done on someone else's rig while the rig's owner does not want the procedure done, the rig's owner may inflict damage upon he who does the procedure.

 

OP

elitebear4

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May 28, 2004

• Nov 26, 2004

• Thread Starter
• #4

alright....then what are my options?

 

greywood

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Blue Bell, Pa

• Nov 26, 2004

• #5

Well... You could put it in the other comp, jumpered as "Slave". If the other comp already has
2 HDD's, you could set it up as the "Master" on the 2nd IDE channel. Either way, I would say
don't try to boot from it, cause that will make changes to the Registry files on your drive.

See the Sticky above about Hard Drive Diagnostics; download and run them on your drive.
If it will pass those and you can read/write files on it, then you are likely "good to go".

 

OP

elitebear4

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May 28, 2004

• Nov 27, 2004

• Thread Starter
• #6

how am i supposed to run the hard drive diagnostic on my drive if i cant even turn on my computer or boot it on someones drive

 

OP

elitebear4

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May 28, 2004

• Nov 28, 2004

• Thread Starter
• #7

bump. should i bring it to best buy and ask for them to try to boot it up on one of THEIR comps? heh

 

JTanczos

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May 7, 2004

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Eastern Pennsylvania

• Nov 28, 2004

• #8

SUGGESTION!!!!!!!!!!! DO NOT BOOT WITH A VALUABLE DRIVE!!!!!!

I worked at a school that had lots of 20 gig drives lying around. The old tech was horrible and didnt label anything. I tried swaping the drives out in a working computer so only the drive I was testing was in. Computer didnt boot so I took it out and tried to boot the computer. Bios chip was burnt out but I didnt know it yet. Put the working drive back in and ruined that one too. So I tried the "working" drive in another working computer and THAT one didnt boot up. It SUCKED! 2 drives dead and 2 motherboards ruined. It would have cost more for the Bios chips then to replace the motherboard.

Be VERY careful when you test the drive.

JT

 

A

Ascii2

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• Nov 29, 2004

• #9

elitebear4 said:

should i bring it to best buy and ask for them to try to boot it up on one of THEIR comps?

Click to expand...

No. Best Buy may charge 60 dollars for that.

 

OP

elitebear4

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May 28, 2004

• Nov 29, 2004

• Thread Starter
• #10

ok. then like i said, what are my options?

 

Westline

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Feb 26, 2004

• Nov 29, 2004

• #11

How big is this hard drive in the first place?

 

A

Ascii2

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• Nov 30, 2004

• #12

Options
1. Do nothing.
2. Disgard hard disk
3. Test hard disk for problems and possibly afterwards disgard the hard disk.

 

OP

elitebear4

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• Nov 30, 2004

• Thread Starter
• #13

its only a 4gb hd, but it has some really important stuff in there.

 

JTanczos

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Eastern Pennsylvania

• Dec 1, 2004

• #14

Get a cheapy computer that you wouldnt care about killing and try it on there. Either that or risk it on a different computer. Just keep in mind when you push the power button it might blow out the bios chip and any other drives. Then again it might do nothing.. but be prepared for nothing happening... at all... ever again on that computer. [/dramatic]

JT