Removing one of two hard drives

[Fiveaces]

I have a PC Desktop with Windows XP. Sometime ago my original hard drive became unaccessible because of faulty software being loaded. I then installed a 2nd hard drive making one a master and the other a slave. I cannot recall if I partioned the drive or not.
Now I would like to remove the original drive in order to have someone recover the data for me.
I don't want to disrupt the CPU as it is working okay.
Can anyone guide me in this. Thanks
Hannah

 

[G0AOZ]

First of all, does XP's Disk Management recognise the 'unaccessible' drive? If so, has it allocated it a drive letter? If it still shows as C: drive and the 2nd fully working drive you added is running as D:, then you'll have a problem if you remove the old drive and try booting up. Windows probably won't boot. Either wait until the old drive has gone through recovery and put it back, or place a partitioned but not formatted drive, suitably jumpered, in its place.

If that old drive is recognised but has no drive letter, is it shown in Disk Management as Drive 0 or Drive 1? If Drive 1 then you can probably remove it without any further alteration. However, check the jumpering on the newer drive. If it's Cable Select (CS), you need do nothing further. Otherwise, see it's set to Master in a Single Drive System.

If the old drive is not recognised by Disk Management but is shown as Drive 0, then you will need to alter the BOOT.INI file after removing the disk to something like this:

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1) etc...

Hope that helps.

ROGER - G0AOZ.

 

[wahnula]

Now I would like to remove the original drive in order to have someone recover the data for me.
I don't want to disrupt the CPU as it is working okay

You don't say whether it's SATA (thin, flat, usually red cable) or IDE (ribbon cable, usually gray). If it's SATA, just remove the first drive and turn your system on. If it's IDE, set the jumper (on the back, by the power connector) to Master and then turn it on.

This assumes that the OS is on disk two. Try it and report back.

Tony

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