[djelement]

Hi Guys,

I need some major help. I need to give you guys a briefing on what happened to so you can better understand the situation. Please bear with me.

I am or was running a Windows 98, Pentium II 233 MHz PC and I had added a new hard drive before. Except I had lost the display driver CD so I bought another video card. Problem is that it used 266 MHz with and integrated PCI rate of 365 MHz. So I think I fried the processor. The reason why I think this is because the only thing that responds to me when I turn on my computer is the mouse and the power supply. Keyboard is dead and nothing comes up on the screen so I suspect the hard drives not responding due to the suspected fried processor.

Here's where my question is:
I still want my files from my hard drive because I have some really important business and session files from my recordings on there. Is it possible for me to just buy an external hard drive kit and access it through USB to retrieve my files (even with Windows 98 still on it). If not, please give me a suggestion. Remember that I don't have a display and the hard drive doesn't kick in so these data recovery software and procedures aren't possible. Put it to you this way. The computer doesn't work, but I need the files. Any suggestions?

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As far as the data recovery.... you need to get the hard drive into a machine that works or contact a professional data recovery company ( expensive!!!)

---edit---

Not sure what happened with the video card but almost sound to me you tried putting a pcie card in a pci slot. Also be warned the hard drive could have taken damage as well and then your only hope would be to take it to a data recovery place or at least a tech shop with some data recovery experience.

Edited by shard92, 08 July 2005 - 11:24 AM.

[shard92]

As far as the data recovery.... you need to get the hard drive into a machine that works or contact a professional data recovery company ( expensive!!!)

---edit---

Not sure what happened with the video card but almost sound to me you tried putting a pcie card in a pci slot. Also be warned the hard drive could have taken damage as well and then your only hope would be to take it to a data recovery place or at least a tech shop with some data recovery experience.

Edited by shard92, 08 July 2005 - 11:24 AM.

[djelement]

so... would I be able to access it externally? or do I have to get it in internally. If I do install it internally, would I be able to keep the one currently in there and have the drive being recovered be secondary? please let me know.

[shard92]

If you put it in another working computer then probably. If you moved it to another computer you would want to put it in as a slave or on the secondary controller and recover what you needed.

[dsenette]

if this drive is your primary boot partition it probably wont load on another machine. if you install a windows OS on a certain harware platform it wont work on another. you would basically have to have another machine with the exact same proccessor and motherboard. like make/model/year/astrological sign....it's a pain

[shard92]

if this drive is your primary boot partition it probably wont load on another machine. if you install a windows OS on a certain harware platform it wont work on another. you would basically have to have another machine with the exact same proccessor and motherboard. like make/model/year/astrological sign....it's a pain

Not strictly true in this case. When you are dealing with winxp ( and maybe 2000 ) that is the case.... Since he was running windows 98 it MAY work okay but it would try to load new drivers and may get confused and may not. even if that where the case he would still be able to boot to safe mode. However the suggestion if for him to put the drive in as a second ( slave / secondary controller ) drive that already has windows running. Maybe this wasn't made clear so I'm restating it.

[dsenette]

as the homies say...my bad

Edited by dsenette, 08 July 2005 - 02:25 PM.

[peterm]

Ok the 1st thing to do is look for a friend who has a computer running windows 98. or who is running 2000 or xp on FAT32 file system. If they are running under the normal NTFS it wont work. It has to be FAT32.
Take your drive out change the jumper settings to be a slave drive.change your friends hard drive to Master with slave. boot the computer and you should be able to get all your files. You can either copy them to your friends hard drive or to an external drive. Once you have your files off change the jumper settings back to the way they were. We can then try and get your computer going knowing that you have your files safe. If you do not know how to change jumper settings then let me know the make and model number of the drive.

[djelement]

Ok the 1st thing to do is look for a friend who has a computer running windows 98. or who is running 2000 or xp on FAT32 file system. If they are running under the normal NTFS it wont work. It has to be FAT32.
Take your drive out change the jumper settings to be a slave drive.change your friends hard drive to Master with slave. boot the computer and you should be able to get all your files. You can either copy them to your friends hard drive or to an external drive. Once you have your files off change the jumper settings back to the way they were. We can then try and get your computer going knowing that you have your files safe. If you do not know how to change jumper settings then let me know the make and model number of the drive.

I don't know how to set my jumper settings. I was able to get my hands on a Windows XP with a FAT32 Drive. My old Hard Drive (the one I'm trying to recover my files from) is a Maxtor 541DX 5400RPM 20 GB ATA/100 Hard Drive. On that note, once I recover my files, would I be able to format it and use as a secondary hard drive? It's not important. Just wondering.

[djelement]

There were directions on the hard drive and I set the jumpers for the Maxtor. The one in the dell should already be set to master am I right? Once I set the hard drives, do I just plug them in and I could access them? Also, I don't think I know how to set a hard drive to a master with slave. I can set it to master though.

Edited by djelement, 09 July 2005 - 11:08 AM.

[peterm]

what is the drive that is master. It has to be set as master with slave
giv me the make and model number and I will see if I can find the settings.