PCTech Forums

i recently bought a new computer and wanted to use my old hard disk as a slave drive. i connected the hard drive from my old computer to my new computer but it is not read when on windows.

on startup it says that there is a slave hard disk but when i open my computer in windows it is knowere to be seen.

i was told i would have to format the hard disk but it holds a lot of important infomation. i was also told it might be physically damage by static or something.

i am using windows 98 on the new hard disk and the old hardisk has no OS. any help would be great, i just dont want to have to format it.

Cheers!

Did you attach it to the middle socket of the same IDE (Ribbon) cable that goes to the Master?
Did you set the Jumper, on the added drive, to Slave?
brad

its all set up properly, the power cable is attached and the ribbon cable coming from the master is attached. since my last post i enable the S.M.A.R.T option on my computer in the BIOS. now when the computer starts it says: "S.M.A.R.T has detected a failure" or something like that?

P.s. sorry for posting it twice

The S.M.A.R.T. ()error is worrying, that sounds like you migt have a crashed hard drive.

Is there a specific error message?

I dont think its the connections because it does show up in the device manager. also on start up when the hdd S.M.A.R.T capabilities are enabled this message comes up: "primary slave hard disk S.M.A.R.T. status bad. warning: immediate backup your data and replace your hard disk, a failiure may be imminent.

Sounds very worrying, but i really need some of the infomation on it.

See if this helps.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.as ... -us;151911