Member Avatar for 3dward5

I have a my brothers pc with a motherboard that's damaged.
I need to save some data from the hdd and i'm wondering if there is a way of doing it with my pc.
His hdd has winxp on it.
My pc has 2 hdrives, 1 is a dual boot with win2k and winxp pro,and the other is just for extra storage space.
I tried taking the spare hdd from my pc and placing his in there, but then my pc wouldn't boot,presumably because of his operating system.(i'd changed the jumpers on his hdd to make it a slave)
Is there some way i can utilize my pc just so i can retrieve a few things from his hdd, without having to buy additional software?

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by JemB
Member Avatar for 3dward5

I' ve found that it is the hdd that's gone after all.I placed his hdd in my pc by itself and tried booting.Exactly the same thing happened in mine as his.No ide device found.I placed my hdd with the operating systems on in his and it booted ok.So it looks like he needs a new drive: /

Member Avatar for BeastOverlordH6

Ah, self-solved. Good luck, sir.

Member Avatar for JemB

you may still be able to recover the data. xp fingerprints the system and often wont boot in another machine. when you put it as slave in your pc also check the bios to make sure it has seen and recognised it. you wont be able to boot from it in your pc but you can still access it as the second drive in my computer to pull the data out. also if the drive circuit is damaged and you can find an identical one with the same circuit board version nr you can swap the board to the damaged drive to recover the data.

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