My hard drive is (was, anyway) an IBM Deskstar 46.1GB IDE drive that I had divided into 2 partitions. Friday night after saving the data that I needed to the secondary partition, I formatted the primary partition and reinstalled Windows. So yesterday, as I was installing the last of the software I use, my computer rebooted on its own. I’m rather used to this, so I didn’t think anything about it until it rebooted once it got to the Windows splash screen. It would do that no matter what. Couldn’t even boot into safe mode.
So I got my XP CD to try to repair the installation. My computer rebooted. I then selected to install XP again to reformat the primary partition. It would show both partitions, but wouldn’t let me format. My computer rebooted.
So, I got a Windows 98 CD and booted to a command prompt.
No C partition. Uhhhhhhhh…
There was a D partition, but it wasn’t my hard drive. It was my USB flash drive. It was at this point that I knew I had a severe problem. I didn’t care what was on the primary partition. I just wanted what was on my secondary partition. So I put the drive in an enclosure and hooked it to my wife’s computer to see if I could at least see it. Her computer rebooted.
After getting a new hard drive for my computer, and getting my software installed on it, I connected the enclosure to my computer. It rebooted.
Now, the data that I want isn’t critical. It’s just browser favorites, game save data, and my World of Warcraft UI mods and interface settings data. But I would like to get it back if I can. Can I retrieve it fairly cheaply?
Did you change the jumpers so the drive is set as a secondary or slave drive? Do you have space to connect it internally as a secondary drive? Does the system boot after Windows starts or when the BIOS attempts to come up? If the latter, does the BIOS recognize the drive?
It’s set up as a master. I didn’t think I would need to change the jumper settings if I was going to try it as an external drive. I’ll try it when I’m finished working.
I also haven’t tried it as an internal slave, but I’ll try that too.
Hooking up the HD as a secondary internal drive would be the way most likely to work. If your original HD was formatted using NTFS, that’s a reason Windows 98 wouldn’t display it, as Win98 only supports FAT32.
I installed the problem drive as a slave, and disabled it as a boot device in the BIOS. The result was the same as I was trying to boot off of it; it rebooted my machine at the Windows splash screen.
I’ve pretty much resigned myself that I can’t get my data off of there with minimal cost, but if you fine people can think of or know of a way, please let me know.
Thanks Manny. That’s an easy enough suggestion to try. If it works, I’ll submit a request to have you canonized as soon as possible. Or, at the very least, buy you a beer if you’re ever in Dallas.