Setting up 2 hard drives

[wally222]

I have a hard drive with Windows XP on it, and I would like install another damaged hard drive with Windows 2000 on it so I can at least salvage some files from it. Could anyone help me with how to do this? Thanks in advance.

 

[computermaineack]

How is it damaged? Most likely you won't be able to recover files from it....

However, if you want to go ahead and try, just plug the drive in the IDE ribbon cable inside your computer. It's a flat cable that connects your motherboard to your CD drives, and your harddrive. There should be two connectors per ribbon cable, so just plug the damaged harddrive into one of the spare connectors on the ribbon cable, and you should be good to go.

 

[meanman]

set the jumper on the back of the hdd to slave first then connect it when you log into windows go into my computer and it should show up there and you can click on it and retrieve what you want as long as its not to damaged.

 

[PC eye]

The best place for adding the drive in is on the middle connector on the primary ide cable. If the read/write heads are too far gone you may have to take it to or send the drive in to a professional data recovery service. If the partition while the drive is detected is not accessible for some reason the use of a live for cd Linux distro would be another consideration.

Knoppix or ubuntu live distros are the most commonly recommended for data retrieval since Linux can access any type of partition MS or Linux. You may have also have to set the jumper on the 2000 drive to cable select if not seen in the post screen or with XP running.