I have two hard drives taken from a computer that suffered a failure in the motherboard. I want to retrieve?

Hi there,

First yes it can be done. But you do know that opening your new computers case can and will void warranty.

You can buy an external drive bay and plug your old drive into that, then connect to your new computer via USB. This will not void your warranty.

Either way you have to set your old drive to slave mode. This is done by moving a jumper plug at the back of your drive.

So if your going to open your computer up. You will be looking for a wide ribbon cable that comes from the mother board to your new hard drive. There should be a spare connector on this cable. If you have a tower then you can permanently place your old drive into the system.

Once you have done that you need to turn on your computer and go into your bios settings. Have that detect the old drive and check that it is set as a slave or secondary drive. Then reboot and see what happens. If you have connected it up correctly then your away. Just go to the old drive and transfer your data.

The external option is the easiest but will cost you to get the externals. I have one that I use as a system backup.

Or just pay some one who knows what they are doing. That is by far the safest way of getting it done.

I have given you a couple of links hope they help.

It is all possible. I am just wondering if you familiar with the Computer Hardware, if not i soften the language.

1. Since it was a mother board problem after getting a new motherboard or new computer you can still use them same hard disks you had. Still with the same settings (One as a master, with the operating system en the other as a slave.)

Yo can get a few hindrance like a blue screen, but you can override it using an Xp cd and run chkdsk/f.

2. You can slave both your hard disk on yo new computer.

You need to know how to change the jumpers on the hard drives.

you will connect them on what they call IDE connectors, grey in color and also power them.

contact me on defpierro@yahoo.com for more guidelines

you can connect two hard disk on the same system but for that you need to change the jumper setting i.e. you will find a black or some colour jumper pin on the hard disk.

so before connecting to the mother board first check the jumpers (a) For primary hard disk put the jumpers on the primary slot. (b) secondary put the jumper on the secondary slot. If you don't know how to do that so please remove one jumper from the SECONDARY HARD DISK before connecting to your mother board.

After changing the jumper connect one hard disk to Primary socket on the mother board and the other one to the secondary cable.

After connecting both the Hard disks. Then go to BIOS setting and change all your Hard drives as "automatic". or if you know how to detect hard drives in BIOS then detect it or make them automatic. save your setting and restart your system.