My machine had big time crash (power supply related). Since I'm sure the warrantee manufacturer will reformat the hard drives(2) when repairing it, I want to recover my FS downloaded files (abour 12 gigs).Can I pull the drives (Windows 98 SE), and put them in the machine listed below (Windows XP), one at a time, just to copy files over. I have plenty of free space on this machine.Are there any tricks I need to know.TIA !!!Bob (Lecanto, Fl)AMD, Athlon XP, 1800+MSI, K7T266 XP ProPC 2100 DDR, 1024 MBXP, Home Edition Elsa GLadiac 920, GF3/64Mb andPNY, Verto nVidia TNT 2-M64/32WD, 100 MB, 7200, Ultra 100Sound Blaster, Audigy MP3+CH Prod, VPP Yoke - Sound CardCH Prod, Pedals - Sound Card

Yes, sure you can. :)Disconect the harddisk from failed machine, and on the back of it where you conenct power cable and IDE cable, it will have pins.Somewhere on harddisk there should be a picture of those pinsand explaining which position is; Master, Slave, Secondary Master, Secondary Slave, Cable Select and so on.If your CD and the harddisk in the system above is conected one Cable, and you have another cable that is free,You would want to pins to Secondarty Master position, and connect it to the free IDE cable.If your Harddisk is connected to one cable, and CDrom to another, you would want to put the hardisk from crashed system to Slave position and connect it to the same cable as the other harddisk.Tell me if that worked.

georgi55: Absolutely correct...now here is a hint. Simply use the second IDE port if open, or disconnect the CD and attach the HD. If there is a second hard drive on the second port, then your original suggestion to change jumpers would be very valid.Also, I've never seen a HD with more than MasterSlaveCable-selectDoes not mean they don't exist, I've just not seen them.best,bt

Thanks for the reply.Did not have any luck.Pulled both drives. Set them both to "slave" (info from Maxtor website). Put in machine.Machine was set up with single cable to hard drive with open receptacle on that same ribbon. Hooked up power and data cable.Started machine and went to bios. Bios would not autodetect needed information. Entered parameters manually.Started machine. Unit would not detect drive. Tried it on both drives with same negative results.I am wondering about UDMA 66 Vs UDMA 100. My drives are UDMA 66 and machine is UDMA 100.Well I tried !!!!Bob (Lecanto, Fl)AMD, Athlon XP, 1800+MSI, K7T266 XP ProPC 2100 DDR, 1024 MBXP, Home Edition Elsa GLadiac 920, GF3/64Mb andPNY, Verto nVidia TNT 2-M64/32WD, 100 MB, 7200, Ultra 100Sound Blaster, Audigy MP3+CH Prod, VPP Yoke - Sound CardCH Prod, Pedals - Sound Card

You should not set both of harddisk to slave. Leave the default WD harddrive to Master, and then chnage the 2nd one to slave.

>Also, I've never seen a HD with more than >>Master >Slave >Cable-select >>Does not mean they don't exist, I've just not seen them. I have 3HDs and two of them are IBM 10GB and 8GB and both of them have 16! different settings with 2 jumpers. Edit: But other than that, just like you I havent seen anything that has more than 3 or 4 options.

>I have 3HDs and two of them are IBM 10GB and 8GB and both of them have 16! different settings with 2 jumpers. Leave it to IBM LOL!Thanks for the education!Best,bt

Bob, UDMA is backward compatable, so that won't be a problem.Keep your original drive as Master, stick the CD rom the second connection on the IDE #1 channel cable. Set the 2nd drive you wish to copy from to master and plug that into the 2nd IDE channel on your motherboad. That should work.

John and all...Thanks for the replies..I tried your suggestion and it too failed.Disconnected CD and DVD, set jumpers to master on both drives.Installed first drive (alone) to test.On start-up, went straight to auto-detect bios, which would not detect drive. Auto detection is working, because it saw that the CD and DVD were gone.Removed first drive and repeated the above on the second drive.Tested each drive separately, with no success...Possible explanation.When the machine failed it was a big time failure. Power supply overheated and threw out machines main switch breaker. Then something else in the power supply failed, because when I reset it (after it cooled) it cycled violently (on and off). Before I could turn it off, lot's of smoke was emulating out of the video card.This indicates to me that the system saw an improperly high voltage, due to some internal breakdown. It could have taken out everything and destroyed the entire computer, and all of it's components.Fortunately it was an older machine of very little value, even though it is still in the warrantee period.I did order a H45 USB Hard Drive Kit, and spare hard drive. With this, one can swap any new, or old, hard drive into it's case, and have a "Hot Swappable" connection that any machine will recognize. It's now made for USB 2.0 for up to 130 MB. (TigerDIrect.com - $74.95).Hopefully this will prevent a repeat of my current dilemma. And actually, I did have most everything back-up to CD's and another PC (since I've been down this road before -- :-walksmile --}.Thanks for all the help !!!Bob (Lecanto, Fl)AMD, Athlon XP, 1800+MSI, K7T266 XP ProPC 2100 DDR, 1024 MBXP, Home Edition Elsa GLadiac 920, GF3/64Mb andPNY, Verto nVidia TNT 2-M64/32WD, 100 MB, 7200, Ultra 100Sound Blaster, Audigy MP3+CH Prod, VPP Yoke - Sound CardCH Prod, Pedals - Sound Card