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Marilenis

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Setting an SATA drive to "slave"

My hardrive crashed (OS failure) and I purchased a new one, installed XP and the remaining software on it.  Now, I need to retreive the information from the bad hardrive.  The bad hardrive is a SERIAL ATA by MAXTOR.  According to the MAXTOR website, my SATA drive is already set to "slave" (although that is the way it was set when it was working as a "master"; I never changed it).  The problem I am having though is that the computer does not see it as a slave drive. If the MAXTOR SATA drive is plugged in (either inside the machine or connected via USB in a HD enclosure) the machine takes about 20 mins to do a "sort of" boot-up which indicates to me that it is stuggling between picking the OS of the good HD and the one from the bad HD.  I've been told that there is a way to set this drive as "slave" via software.  I looked into the BIOS but no luck there.  Any ideas of what to do?

Rev. Stiletto
Avatar of Watzman
Watzman

Your post makes very little sense.

First of all, if the hard drive truly "crashed", a term that you are using imprecisely, the drive may be "gone" and the data is possibly lost to any recovery by you or any "normal" user action.  Problem is, we can't tell what really happened.

Your comments about connecing the drive externally via USB are a bit inconsistent your characterization of the drive as serial ATA; also, Serial ATA drives do not have master/slave jumpers.

The bottom line here is that your description of what you have and what happened is so imprecise that without more information, we really cannot help you.

Why don't you tell us EXACTLY:

-What drive you have (exact model number0
-What happened (as much detail as possible)
-How the drive is connected to the computer (give us the motherboard or serial ATA adapter model number, the kind of cable(s) being used, etc.)
-As much information as possible

Avatar of nobus
if you want to identify your devices, you can use Everest :

http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=4181 

For the rest, i support Watzman completely, we need better and more info
Remove the Master/Slave jumper completely and reboot.  Report back.
Avatar of Marilenis

ASKER

Thanks to all but none of these worked.  The jumper was a fixed piece so I could not move it.  Was eventually able to retrieve data though with a help from a friend who knows more than I do about SATA drives.  

Thanks to all thouhg.  Rev. C. Stiletto
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DarthMod
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