I stared having problems with my computer to the point it would no longer boot and after SEVERAL error messages (including a S.M.A.R.T. message saying my HDD was bad--BACK up and replace) I reinstalled my OS (XP Home sp2) on my second HDD. Everything works fine as long as the first HDD is not plugged in. I want to attempt to recover the data on my ORIGINAL HDD but when I attempt to start my computer with the bad HDD plugged in (as the secondary drive now), Windows will not start up. It attempts to and I get the Win loading screen and then everything just quits working.

Even with the bad HDD disabled in BIOS it STILL won't load the OS. If I unplug the bad HDD;however, everything works fine and Win loads with no problem.

Any suggestions would be great. Thanks for your time.CHECK the jumpers on the "Bad" hard drive.

http://members.aol.com/mbs1058/ibm_jumpers.html

If they are set right than go to the hard drive manufacture site and down load the tools to run a check on the drive.

It maybe to far gone to get your data back.
indeed- if you moved it from Master to the slave position it is likely to still have the jumpers set to master, which would fully explain your problems. I did not have jumpers on either HDD. Do the drives have to be connected with the same wire to be considered master/slave? On my system each is connected to a SATA port on the mobo with its own wire. In an attempt to avoid setup problems I switched the two wires on the HDDs (to keep the original working config).

I did find a jumper and set the bad one to power up in standby mode (I think its what it's called) and Win did actually start but the drive is not shown in the system.

I am having trouble finding the correct jumper setup info (dont have the documentation) and most of what I find shows 6pin and I have 8pin.

WD740ADFD Raptor is what I am using. If anyone knows more about the jumper setup I would appreciate it or any other ways to get the bad HDD to show up so I can see if anything is salvageable.