Rebooting XP question

[upnorth]

There are many different BIOS types out there. And there are also many ways to access them. And every type is different once you get in. Most are pretty simple and intuitive, but some are not. Once in you can go from screen to screen til you find boot order. You also want to be sure the BIOS recognizes the current hard drive.

[Shack]

Statistically there is a dedicated F key you can tap or hold when the system is starting to get you into booting order also. I know for some BIOS can get confusing and this cuts out having to navigate through BIOS to find boot order. Statistically holding down F12 or F10 during the power up get you in, but like Upnorth said, almost every PC/OS combo I have worked on it different. Google is a wonderful thing as well as YouTube. Well maybe not for a how to on winning the lotto, but they have that also.

[Scott M]

So I bought a hard drive USB connection and have it plugged in and it is showing my hard drive and the partitions I had, but it is asking me if I want to format them...not good. I declined of course, but doesn't that mean it doesn't recognize what's in them? Am I better off taking this to the Geek Squad for data recovery? Not sure what the deal is right now. I don't think I fried these drives but it was when I lost power during teh storm and it was plugged into a surge strip...

[upnorth]

If you say no to the format, will it allow you to browse the drive. You may need to go to computer management then to drive management to mount it.

[Jim Almquist]

When you double click on the drive that is in the enclosure in My Computer the only choice is to format ?

What I would expect you to see is a bunch of folders like Program Files,WINDOWS,Documents and Settings and things like that.

[LMITOUT]

Dip switches need to be set on the hard drive, perhaps? (master/slave)

But if he gets this far I would think they are correct?

[Scott M]

I'll try it again tonight. I didn't change any settings yet.

[upnorth]

Good call LMITOUT. There are going to be a couple settings, Slave, Master, and Cable Select. I would use slave. Cable select it for when you have more than 1 drive on a cable.

[Scott M]

Need some help guys. It's recognizing the drives all right, but I have 2 hard drives in this computer I'm accessing, and I have a partition in one (for a total of 3 drives showing up). I can open one of the drives, I see Program Files, Documents and Settings, etc. but its not the stuff I need. I tried to look for a jumper on the pins to fiddle with master/slave setting, but I don't see any jumper

[Scott M]

Wait a minute, I found a jumper (I must see like I'm 80). Should I switch it to the other hard drive? I tried powering up the other drive, but even with the power connection, it won't turn on...is that spelling trouble?

[upnorth]

I am not sure I understand what you are asking? Are you talking you see where the jumper is? If so it was most likely set to master, and you will need to set it slave if that is not what you are asking I guess I just am not understanding what you are asking.

[Jim Almquist]

Disconnect the drive or leave it powered off. Turn on your computer and look to see what drives show up in My Computer. You should see something like C:,D:,E: and when you connect your enclosure,it should add one more like F:. Because the enclosure is a USB your can plug it in at any time. The little strap that you want to move is on the hard drive with the files you want, so you might have to open the enclosure and move the strap to the far right or closest to the power connector. When it straps pins 1 & 2 it will now be Cable Select. You do not have to mess with any of your other hard drives. If it shows up you will want to double click on the drive and then click on Documents and Settings and hopefully your files are there. If the drive dose not show up it may be toast or there is a problem with your setup.

[pureinsanity]

This might help you better understand the master/slave a bit better

[pureinsanity]

I cant say much about Cable Select as I have never dealt with it. But from my understanding it's amazing and helps save on boot time too.

[upnorth]

Cable select is really only if you have 2 drives on the same ide cable. Master or slave is the best bet, especially if you are unsure. Master is the boot device, slave would be data or apps only.

[Scott M]

The little strap that you want to move is on the hard drive with the files you want, so you might have to open the enclosure and move the strap to the far right or closest to the power connector. When it straps pins 1 & 2 it will now be Cable Select. You do not have to mess with any of your other hard drives. If it shows up you will want to double click on the drive and then click on Documents and Settings and hopefully your files are there. If the drive dose not show up it may be toast or there is a problem with your setup.

I haven't physically disconnected the drive, but the cable select pin setting should be on the drive, right?

[upnorth]

There is a schematic on the drive that shows how it needs to be setup for the different options.

[Shack]

Yep, yep & yep.

Here are some images from my end. This one is just a reference and not where you want it set when slaving. Also note this is a Seagate 40g and just showing the scammy image for what to look for. This might not be the way your hdd suggests.

This a Dell doner system to my next home server all out cheap & crazy project. I will be target practicing with 40G 3D target soon but should be about the same.

[pureinsanity]

if that picture doesn't help you the jumper is between the large ribbon and the incoming power.

Just make sure if you are disconnecting your drive to turn off the computer, Unplug your computer, and hit the power button to get any juice that might be in the power supply out. And keep in mind this time of year we produce a lot of static. Make sure you ground yourself out to the computer before you start digging.

[spearchucker]

Cable select is really only if you have 2 drives on the same ide cable. Master or slave is the best bet, especially if you are unsure. Master is the boot device, slave would be data or apps only.

You also need a cable that supports cable select. Most do, but I have seen some that don't.

[Scott M]

Thanks for the help. The drive that wouldn't power up has my stuff I'm currently making decisions how much its worth to me to get the stuff I didn't back up. Luckily the all important photos were backed up and some other miscellaneous things. It's looking like there were a few things I would have wanted to back up that I might be s.o.l. on, but all things considered it wouldn't be the end of the world.

I don't have to tell this crowd, but back it all up!. My next computer will likely have a mirror drive or an external HD to save things to.

Case closed.

[Jim Almquist]

Start right now with that extra drive and throw it in that enclosure and start using that for backing up pics and other important docs

[spearchucker]

I would use an external backup instead of mirroring drives. If a power surge or lightning takes out one drive it is likely both will be gone.

[LMITOUT]

That's a bummer about the bad drive. I had a bad feeling when you mentioned lightning and then later saying that one of the drives wouldn't power up. At least you picked up a few things about recovering files from stand-alone drives.

[upnorth]

One good option if you have more than one PC and would like to backup data from all is a NAS. It is a separate device that sits on your network is basically a standalone file server. You can use UNC or mapped drives to save or backup the files there. I have not really looked to hard at them lately, I am hoping the cost comes down. They can be setup with RAID 1-10 so you have some redundancy built in there too.