HELP! Please?..thx

Hi PPL,

Ok, this is the problem.....
My comp completely died the other night and when I took out the hard drives to another computer to salvage what I really needed, this happened:

2 drives were transfered over...
1st worked ok, everything in tact
2nd not recognized by anything except FDISK, and I DON'T want to format it, without getting what I need off it first....

it's not recognized...neither FAT or FAT32 is recognized as the file system...


help!?,,, it once worked before, as a FAT drive...but not now : (

-Thx

Is your data backed up?
How many pins are on the drives?
What type of computer were they in before?
What type now? Does the drive have the power connector attatched to it? Is there an error message when you try to access the drive now? Is there an active partition set for the drive? Is it a bootable drive? How many partitions were made with FDISK? Are you using DOS? What version of DOS? Does it have a primary partition. Is there a non DOS partition on it? Is the drive jumpered correctly. Is the cable contacting all the pins? What is the storage capacity of both drives? Is there a CDROM in the new machine? Was there a CDROM in the old machine? Who manufactured the drives? Are the drives connected to the motherboard now or an expansion card now? What was the arrangement in the old machine, what were the drives connected to?

------------------
I never say thingy.

Holla!....

Thx for the quick response..I'll try to answer all your questions, in the best way possible...

1.Data is not backed up : (
2."pins" assuming the connector "thingy" : )
ummm, there are...39 pins
3. Computer Before: dual Celeron 466mhz, on a Abit BP6 Mother Board, Asus 3800 TNT2 Vid card, SB live, 2 LAN cards, Adaptec SCSI.
AFTER: 233mhz Pentium I....lotsa old hardware in it...sb16! : )
4. Yes power is connected, drive is recognized in FDISK, but not in anything else, not DOS, not windows, not NT, not OS2...nothing..
5. Can't access drive at all therefore no error
6. 2 Partitions.
7. Yes bootable, was my boot drive in other comp
8. 2 partitions, not made with FDISK, but with the cheap proggie that came with the drive, called Max drive or something, cheesy software provided with Maxtor
drive.
9. Yes, DOS, and also windows...both can't find the drive.
10. Version of Dos = Win98 Dos thingy, ... I'm not quite sure what the version is
11. Yes there is a primary partition, and both partitions on it are DOS
12. Yes jumpered correctly, BIOS finds it fine.
13. Cable has been inspected and are fine
14. storage cap.
drive #1: 10 gig (no problem with this drive)
drive#2: 2.5gig, the problem drive..
15. New machine has CD rom
16. Old machine also had a CD rom
17. Drive#1 was manufactured by IBM
Drive#2 by Maxtor
18. Drives are linked directly to the Mother board
19. In the old machine the drives were also connected to the Mother board


Thx for your helpings : )

Any Idea what's happening?...

Thx again

-[Turbo]

Fdisk does see the drive so thats a good sign to a degree.
You say your computer "died", define died, that means different thigns to different people. Maybe it was a hard drive problem
See if the drives will work independently of each other. If so get your data off ASAP. Run scandisk from a boot disk & to the thorough test
Maxtor also has a drive diag tool called Maxdiag but it does a destructive write to the hard drive.
Looks for a mfgr date n the drive. Mayge its still under warranty. Theyre typically 3 years