My old hard drive???

[Knave]

Last summer I replaced my hard drive. Among other things. I assumed at the time that the electrical surge that fried the motherboard also fried the hard drive. I didn't throw away the hard drive as I wanted to try and retrieve data (pictures) I had on the drive. Today I set the pins to the appropriate slave/master settings and powered the computer up to see what is what. Went to "my computer" and there it was. Listed as a D drive. It shows as having no data on it. I am asked if I want to reformat the drive. I can accept the loss of data. If it is truly gone. So I have two questions. Is there something else I can try to make sure it is as empty as it seems to be? And Is it safe to leave in as a slave/master combination? It is not making any noise. It didn't smell funny when it was hooked up. They are both 160 gig units. PATA, of course. I have plenty of space on the hard drive I am currently using so space is not a factor. What do you think guys??? And gals!!!

[Aesir Rising]

Not enough info to be sure of what the next steps should be, but did you check and adjust if necessary any BIOS options relating to that old disk?

For example, if the BIOS didn't auto-detect drive geometry correctly (heads/cylinders/sectors) - and set exactly the same geometry parameters as on the original motherboard, then the partition is set wrong and it doesn't recognize the format - and what you would see is the operating system showing you a blank disk and asking if you wanted to format it. Which is what you describe. Making changes to the old disk (formatting, writing files to it, etc.) can result in lost data, so avoid that unless all hope is gone.

The BIOS needs to be set correctly before going much further. If you're certain (or as certain as you can be) that the drive settings are correct in the BIOS, then I'd just disconnect the new drive (to protect it from data loss), disconnect the old drive, set it as master, and connect it to the port where the new drive was. Check BIOS, save changes, reboot if changes were made, and see if it tries to load the operating system that was on the old drive. If it does get this far, it'll puke up a bunch of errors (because none of the new motherboard drivers or disk controller drivers are installed on the old drive). But that's ok because if you see all that, then your data is probably intact and you just need to re-combobulate your system. :)

So, if you get that far.. disconnect old drive, leave as master and connect it to the *other* (Secondary) PATA port on your motherboard... where your CD/DVD is possibly connected to now. Set the CD/DVD as slave to the old drive's Master (on Secondary controller or controller #2). Plug in the new drive back to it's original port and at the same settings (Master on PATA Primary controller 1, most likely). Recheck the BIOS, save changes, and restart... and hopefully you have drive c: (new drive), drive d: (old drive) and drive e: (CD or DVD drive).

Hope this helps. Bottom line is that if your system sees a drive D: now, then it's likely recoverable - and likely just an issue with BIOS configuration of the drive's geometry.

If that doesn't let you recover everything, and your certain (or as certain as possible) the old drive's settings in the BIOS are accurate, then you can use data recover tools, like this:
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk
to see what you can get back. It works well - but you can also lose data with any recovery tool, and they tend to be targetted towards technicians and not very user-friendly, so go slow/careful and you get stuff back. Like I did last month when a process I ran deleted my program files folder...

[Knave]

Thank you for the prompt reply. You certainly gave me options I can try. I will post tomorrow after a little experimenting. I was talking with my Elder Son earlier and he said the capacitors in the old hard drive might have run down leaving the drive devoid of information. It has been 11 months. I called him a nerd boy and he laughed at me before hanging up. I will try what you have suggested. I format to the nstc (sp?) standard. However there is a chance the old drive was formatted to fats32. I am comfortable mucking about in the bios. Not knowing how the original machine was set up may hamper me somewhat. Setting up the old drive as the only drive will probably tell me everything I need to know.

If and when I decide to reformat the old drive, will it be safe and reliable to run??

[Hawk]

If you go through the steps Aesir suggested, when you get to the point he mentioned;

then I'd just disconnect the new drive (to protect it from data loss), disconnect the old drive, set it as master, and connect it to the port where the new drive was. Check BIOS, save changes, reboot if changes were made, and see if it tries to load the operating system that was on the old drive.

your BIOS should automatically detect the settings. You can write them down. Then when you plug the old drive in as a slave you should be able to adjust the settings for it in the BIOS from the info you wrote down.

[Wolverine@MSU]

There's a program called Testdisk (free, google it) that can look at hard drives, see if there are partitions and list/copy files on partitions it finds. I used it to make an image of a hard disk that I thought was lost and gone forever.

[Silverback]

........I was talking with my Elder Son earlier and he said the capacitors in the old hard drive might have run down leaving the drive devoid of information..................

hard drive ? capacitors run down? normal hard drives use rotating disks with magnetic coatings and retain data when powered down.

power surge could have damaged drive controller, motor or head actuator or overwritten some sectors on the drive. Chances are a professional file recovery company would get data off it but not cheaply. Power surges don't normally kill the data on the disk but can damage the disk controller. If you have an identical hard disk its sometimes possible to change the controllers over but you also run a high risk of losing both disks - depends on how valuable the data is.

Try it as the only disk and see if it is recognised. PATA slave disks often use the master disk controller for some tasks. Is the drive spinning - it should make a little noise at least - listen to it when powering up the PC.

You could try booting your PC from a linux live CD and see if that could see data on the drive. If the drive is fried enough to need reformatting but will take a format then do a full surface test on it several time if you want to put stuff on it you can't afford to lose.

[Knave]

I found myself loaded up with plenty of Homework!! I connected the old drive up to the computer all by itself and hit the on button. What came up was a black screen requesting I insert a boot disk. I felt the case of the drive and felt a little vibration. I could also hear a slight whine. I went into the bios and wrote down the various modes. However I couldn't find to what standard It was formatted. The black screen coming up tells me it was no longer formatted in a manner making it useful. I hooked the new drive back up. It had no vibration and made no noise. It is tempting to wait until I run out of space to get another drive. However, after looking at what Newegg has to chose from in the ata style of drives, I may not wait quite that long. Technology moves on at its own pace. Last year they had a bigger selection. Next year could be even smaller. For 60 bucks I can double my storage and not worry about it. The data I was wanting was mostly pictures I had scanned. I still have the pictures. I was wanting to save myself some time sorting through memory lane.

Thank you everybody!!

[Gwizz]

I would try the boot disk you made with the dead drive installed.
of course that means putting the bad drive back in and if you made a boot disk, to see if all you were missing was the boot up information on the hard drive.
Of course I would never be that lucky.

[Knave]

A very good idea there Jerry. However in my hurry up and procrastinate way of doing things, I never burned a recovery disk. It was a HP computer. And burning a disk was something they suggested I do as a new owner. I never needed one before and didn't see much reason in doing it when I first bought the machine. To late now!!

[Gwizz]

Make one with the new hard drive.

[Knave]

Oh, Cha!! and Duh!! Okay, the little light came on over my head. Burning dim, but its on. I'll install my old drive and then my XP disk and try a repair. I bow to the master mind!! Thank you Jerry. I'd be embarrassed, but you only had to tell me twice.