HDD Controller Failure

Received this message when booting up this 486 pc running Win 95.
HDD Controller Failure - Press F1 to Resume
F1 displayed the Amibios System Configuration and under it was this message
Drive Not Ready insert Boot Diskette in A: - Press any key
Insert Win 95 Boot Disk, starts very slowly, then it says Win 95 Boot Disk and goes to an A:\>
Question what command is it looking for, and what drive is failing, could a bad Floppy Drive be causing this message? or is the HD toast?
Help, this machine has some important tax files on it.

 

Your HDD controller being reported as bad does not indicate a bad HDD. It indicates a bad mainboard or bad removable add-in controller card (like SCSI card) or both. That's what may be useless. You might be able then, to remove the Hard Drive from the target machine, jumper it as Slave, install it in another machine with a long 32 inch-dual head ribbon cable and copy the sensitive data to the machines' Master HDD.

 

Thank you STYXX for your prompt reply. Will procede to extract the needed information as you suggested.

 

You should count your blessing if you still have a 486 that has worked this long ;-)