OK, here's my setup:
Athlon XP 2200
512 MB DDR RAM
20GB Primary IDE master - C: (with OS installed)
80GB Primary IDE slave - D: (no OS - data and other stuff)
CD/CDRW Secondary IDE
Win98SE
Everything has been working fine for about a year now and then suddenly, this weekend I hit some problems. While my computer was sitting idle I noticed it suddenly went to a blue screen that said something like "error writing to C: drive". So, I rebooted and then the BIOS (Phoenix) started hanging on the "Detecting IDE drives..." POST message. It hung for about 10 seconds and then couldn't find either drive on the Primary IDE channel.
So, my first impression was that the master drive was at fault. Through some trial and error testing, I found that actually, the slave drive (80 GB) is the problem. The master works fine without the slave attached, but as soon as the slave is there, it freezes on the POST message. Sometimes the 80GB drive is detected by the BIOS, sometimes not. It seems to be fairly random when the BIOS can detect it. Even when it is detected by the BIOS, Windows/DOS cannot read from the drive (gets a "cannot read from media" or some such error).
I've narrowed it down to definitely being the slave drive because the same symptoms show up when it is plugged into a different system altogether. As a sanity check I have also tried different IDE channels, different cables, different jumper settings, and making the drive settings in the BIOS manually rather than auto-detect - all with the same results.
So, there's obviously some issues with the drive. Now the big question is, can I get the data on the drive off of it somehow? More specifically, can I (or someone else) do that without voiding the warranty and without costing me several hundred dollars? I have a lot of game saves and other data on the drive which would be a real pain in the butt to lose, but not enough to pay that much cash out.
Or is there something else that I might be missing? Is there some kind of boot disk tool that could maybe access the drive when Windows cannot (on the occasions when BIOS can detect the drive)?
Thanks in advance for any help you can provide.
Athlon XP 2200
512 MB DDR RAM
20GB Primary IDE master - C: (with OS installed)
80GB Primary IDE slave - D: (no OS - data and other stuff)
CD/CDRW Secondary IDE
Win98SE
Everything has been working fine for about a year now and then suddenly, this weekend I hit some problems. While my computer was sitting idle I noticed it suddenly went to a blue screen that said something like "error writing to C: drive". So, I rebooted and then the BIOS (Phoenix) started hanging on the "Detecting IDE drives..." POST message. It hung for about 10 seconds and then couldn't find either drive on the Primary IDE channel.
So, my first impression was that the master drive was at fault. Through some trial and error testing, I found that actually, the slave drive (80 GB) is the problem. The master works fine without the slave attached, but as soon as the slave is there, it freezes on the POST message. Sometimes the 80GB drive is detected by the BIOS, sometimes not. It seems to be fairly random when the BIOS can detect it. Even when it is detected by the BIOS, Windows/DOS cannot read from the drive (gets a "cannot read from media" or some such error).
I've narrowed it down to definitely being the slave drive because the same symptoms show up when it is plugged into a different system altogether. As a sanity check I have also tried different IDE channels, different cables, different jumper settings, and making the drive settings in the BIOS manually rather than auto-detect - all with the same results.
So, there's obviously some issues with the drive. Now the big question is, can I get the data on the drive off of it somehow? More specifically, can I (or someone else) do that without voiding the warranty and without costing me several hundred dollars? I have a lot of game saves and other data on the drive which would be a real pain in the butt to lose, but not enough to pay that much cash out.
Or is there something else that I might be missing? Is there some kind of boot disk tool that could maybe access the drive when Windows cannot (on the occasions when BIOS can detect the drive)?
Thanks in advance for any help you can provide.