Hard Disk problem

[kevin_476]

My folks had a HP from the turn of the century that was dieing and they wanted me to gut... well, I wanted to gut it so I got them a new machine and have been trying to salvage what I can from their old beast. Now they tell me they need stuff that was stored on their old HD(documents and whatnot).
I tried to hook up the HD to my computer, but my HD is SATA and theirs is IDE. Now, I know that setting up a HD as a secondary slave should not be that difficult. I've seen it done, and read online walkthroughs, but I cannot figure it out. When the old HD is hooked up it boots to that one, which is not what I want. I've tried messing around with boot order BIOS, but truth be told I am more a self-taught techy and I've never really gotten the hang of BIOS. Now, the Hard Disk stopped responding.
If anyone out there can give me some tips on what I might have missed, please let me know. The data is very important and I am desperate to get it.
PS: I removed the little jumper on the HD because I was told that that is the thing to do, does it matter if the IDE HD is set to slave or not?

[ranjan2001]

Me facing the same problem with my new comp cant get this working, looking for answers.

[logan_657@yahoo.com]

There is no master and slave relationship in a Sata. You can set the disk as a Master or a single disk on its own if there is a setting for such. Go out to purchase an external hard disk enclosure, insert the century-old hard drive in it, hook it up with a USB cable and let it work as an external hard disk.

Problem solved. External enclosure for 3.5" HDD enclosure retails at about 20 sterling in UK and should be well under US$40 in USA
Although if you still have any problem with your HDD then why don’t you try any Recovery labs like Salvage Data Recovery Lab. They usually solve these kinds of problems with a snatch of the finger.

[g_goyal2000]

Originally Posted by logan_657@yahoo.com

There is no master and slave relationship in a Sata. You can set the disk as a Master or a single disk on its own if there is a setting for such. Go out to purchase an external hard disk enclosure, insert the century-old hard drive in it, hook it up with a USB cable and let it work as an external hard disk.

Problem solved. External enclosure for 3.5" HDD enclosure retails at about 20 sterling in UK and should be well under US$40 in USA

Correct. The hdd enclosure would cost around Rs. 300.

[saurav29]

I cannot see the the point of buying HDD enclosures..... until your motherboard donot have an ide port..... which i seriously doubt........ As your optical drive will be working on one......
Ok i have seen boards with four SATA and 1 IDE....... but no IDE i havent't seen one by now........
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Connecting an IDE device is very simple you donot need to be a rocket scientist to figure that out for sure......
Let me explain a bit Each IDE port (One which uses a 40/80 pin conductor ribbon cable can have two devices attached to it so...... aka master and Slave...... hence is the name primary master and primary slave if you have two ide ports then secondary master and secondary slave too......

Now if you remove the jumper.... as advised your drive will become slave so if there is one more device say dvd drive on the same cable too set to slave your hdd will not detect.....(reason one should be master and other should be slave) so set it accordingly.... or just disconnect the other device in that case hdd will become slave.... (or connect it via extra cable to empty port if you have 2 ports )

in bios the order of drive listing is primary master>primary slave >secondary master> secondary slave> sata1>sata2......

so in event of connecting it as primary master and restating the computer bios takes it as the first drive and sets it as the first boot device......
You simply have to look for settings like
advanced>boot device priority > and select your SATA HDD as first device.... you will just see the HDD names example ST160xxx for seagate 160gb or samsung SV40xxxx for samsung 40 gb... just be sure to select your sata HDD and.........

Save and Exit BIOS settings........ (remember to save and exit not simply exit...) and your computer will boot from your sata hdd ) no problems whatsoever just give it a try.........

alternatively some bios also gives option of selecting Boot device after POST(Power On Self Test) in this case you will have to press the key for this usually it says press F8 for BBS popup.. so while Post if you press F8 your bios will show you the list of devices...... and you have to just select your sata hdd to boot from it no setting req in BIOS.....but this key differ from bios to bios F8 for American megatrends bios you can refer to your MB manual for your keys.........

AFAIK these days BIOS are very smart and well programmed it is not that hard.... and to buy HDD enclosures for it is a wastage of money even if it is measly 300bucks......

peace
raj