No better way to learn by DOING! I am an accountant by background, and have worked as an 'IT Auditor' for the last 8. Discount the last 4 where I think I knew nothing really of IT, so probably on 4. So, I am always learning about IT, and now I feel like a rocket scientist for having learned a bit.
OK, so I got the bridge, and got it working. I found the going tough with the PC seeing the HD as a drive and then not seeing it. Really slow copying from it and having to restart sometimes. I had to resort to only copying two folders from it which I know holds the crown jewels (photos and important letters).
So, then I tried to reformat to NTFS, but progress was REALLY REALLY slow and I gave up. Finally brought it to the techies in the office who now confirmed that the hard drive was/is the last spasms of life and I was a bit lucky to get anything from it.
So, I've learned about bridges, SATA, PATA, IDE drives, what i looks like when the machine finds it hard to work with a sick HD drive and I've learned about the disc manager utility in Windows.
Thanks for patiently helping, and for being able to share my exitement with someone.
Some advice i am going to try, aparently sticking the drive in the freezer helps to recover data, so i'll try just to see. But I'll shop for new HD for PC and make it my main lab machine with Windows 7 (want to put some virtual machines on there). My little dell i'll use to build a dual boot linux and windows machine.
But the key message, you only really learn by doing.
Edited by Onfinals, 05 April 2013 - 10:00 AM.