Need Some Input

[Aces High]

whats up tweakers,
I recently picked up some misc hardware at neighbours garage sale.
Old intel chips(still dont know why),some leds motherboards etc...
I also grabbed two hard drives,a old western digital,Caviar 2420
AT Compatible drive parameters-989cyl 15heads 56spt 425.3mb
Seagate 4092cyl 2111mb 16heads 63sectors.The person I purchased them from had no knowledge of data or condition of drives.Now is there a safe way to view data or get info on condition of drives?Really curious to se whats on them,but dont want to create problems within system.Do I have options other than rolling the dice.Thanx alot.

 

[David]

try hooking them up to your rig. If the plugs dont fit then you need an older HD controller.

 

[JaY_III]

if its an IDE drive the connections will fit.
IDE has not changed it 40 pins count...

once again, just put them in your rig...
RUN a SURFACE SCAN (test for bad sectors) then you are set.

 

[Krieger]

personally I disconnect my primary drives before playing with drives I dont know anything about nad boot to dos with a boot disk then check the drive, maybe use a AV tool on it. just to be on the safe side. I did this with a 800 meg drive my father had lying around for a system I'm going to give to my sister for email and word processing(P120 @ 133... working on getting it higher doesn't really agree with me on that though).