Hard Disc Recovery

[pah72]

Help!
Can u help. A serge of electrcity effected my motherboard and is not operational. Also, I think it has effected my hard disc(HD) because the HD is not recognised in another computer(new). I am a bit desperate because I have a lot of work on the HD that I need to extract. Is there a way of doing it. At the moment when I turn on the new computer with this HD, the HD is not recognised and I have a meesage "Hard Disc Boot Failure.....". Can I extract the information using Dos commands with a 2nd Hard disc.
I am totally lost. your help would be grately appreciated.

Paul.

P:S: I am using Pentium II, Windows 98

 

[edfair]

Have you attempted to auto identify, which sets up the proper info in the CMOS? Which then allows you to look at the partition table with fdisk.

If it will not auto identify, attempting to use it as a 2nd drive in another machine will be an exercise in futility.

You might want to feel and listen to the drive as power is applied. Should feel some vibration as it spins up, should step and seek , which sounds like a short bzzzt, and should ve a very quiet hum continuing as it runs.

If no run, then you have a choice to make for data recovery.
Probably going to be expensive.

Ed Fair
Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply. Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.

 

[pah72]

Thank you for your reply, I am not a hardware person by any means. Please can you elaborate on your answer, in terms of what do I actually do with the CMOS ETC. The electricity knocked out all the hardware components of my machine (ethernet adapter, CR Rom, Re-writer, motherboard), but funny enough not the RAM or 'A' Drive. If I have the worse scenario case where I go for data Recovery, how do I go about doing this and what does it involve. Thank you very much for your time

Paul.

 

[edfair]

In the new computer, with the possibly damaged hard drive installed as primary master, which it probably was to start with, you go into the CMOS setup area, usually with the delete key while the machine is doing the power up testing.
At the setup screen you may have a section HDD auto detect.
If so, choose it. If the drive is detectable it will set the proper values in CMOS and allow you to get access to it.

To get access, you need to use a boot disk (floppy).
Assuming the disk is seen by the BIOS, allowing it to boot up using the hardware settings (buried in the operating system) can result in problems.
You can get a boot disk at

http://www.bootdisk.com.

If the drive isn't detectable by automated means, you could insert the values in the CMOS for the drive and see if it is detectable. For values you go to the manufacturer's site if the information isn't on a label on the drive.

And if all fails, do a google search for "data recovery".


Ed Fair
Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply. Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.

 

[Rufusman]

It may be that your HDD controller board was cooked with the power surge. changing the controller board with an identical drive (same make, model and firmware)can sometimes get the drive recognising again and the data can then be copied off quickly to another drive.

If you cannnot find an identical drive and if you are based in Australia and need to find an indentical drive, go to

http://www.pcbsearch.com.au.

you may find that they have the drive you are after.

 

[pah72]

I have entered the vlues in CMOS and the computer still does not recognise it, i recieve a massage on setup - "primary master hard disc fail"....I should therefore use the data-recovery option?

What is important is that I can access the information, what is the probability of this?

Thank you for your kind replies

Paul