[swinging_simian]

Hi

I've recently had both my PCs go pop, which is leaving me slightly distraught that I might have lost all of my data and it's backups.

One of the PCs has had multiple hard drive failures. The first was a while back, after about 18 months of buying the computer. The replace lasted about 3 months or so, then it crashed a few times, then refused to boot stating that it could find some file in the windows system directory and that I should use the XP to repair it. I tried this, but it refused to recognise the hard drive when trying to repair. if I tried to boot normally it would recognise the HD, but then fail with the error stated above. We sent this back and got a replacement. The replacement did almost exacty the same thing, it recognises the hard drive in the BIOS screen then refuses to recognise it when I try and install XP.

Is it possible for the SATA controller to be screwing my hard drives? Is it possible that my old apparently knackered hard drives are in fact fine and it's just my motherboard causing problems? The motherboard is an ASRRock 755Twins-HDTV somthing or other, sorry I can't be more specific, my girlfriend threw the packaging away.

I've potentially lost all my photo's, music, you name it I've lost it :|
Hence, any help will be greatly appreciated.

Cheers

Nath

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Hi Nath,

Don't worry, hopefully your files will still be ok. My advise would be to install XP on the new blank disk, but you must load the SATA controller's drivers off of a floppy disk during the XP install. When you first start setup, watch the bottom of the screen for something that says something along the lines of "Press F6 to install a third party driver" this driver will be available from the ASrock website (sorry, couldn't find your model on their site) with the other drives for your motherboard, usually it will specify that it is for the F6 install of XP.

Once you get XP up and running, you should be able to install your old disk as a slave drive and rescue your files.

[ClickRight]

Hi Nath,

Don't worry, hopefully your files will still be ok. My advise would be to install XP on the new blank disk, but you must load the SATA controller's drivers off of a floppy disk during the XP install. When you first start setup, watch the bottom of the screen for something that says something along the lines of "Press F6 to install a third party driver" this driver will be available from the ASrock website (sorry, couldn't find your model on their site) with the other drives for your motherboard, usually it will specify that it is for the F6 install of XP.

Once you get XP up and running, you should be able to install your old disk as a slave drive and rescue your files.

[swinging_simian]

Ooops, school boy error.

THanks.

Nath