I'm trying to recover data from a functioning Maxtor 33073U4. It is formatted Fat32 and running Windows 98. I removed the J50 jumper (and another horizontal jumper that I'm not quite sure why it was there) and HOOKED it up as the slave. My master is a Hitachi HDt722525DLAT80 running Windows XP Media Center Edition, SP3 with NTFS file system.

The DRIVE is visible in the boot menu, however when i try to boot from it I receive an error message "himem.sys is working improperly (error 502)" and I can get no further. While in Windows XP, i cannot see the drive in My Computer, as there is no drive letter assigned to it. I can see it in Disk Management, and when i right click on the drive, my only option is to "Delete partition".

I really want to recover my personal data from this hard drive before i discard it, is there anyway i can get to it without reformatting this Maxtor drive?

Also, I only have a CD drive, no floppy drive and practically no experience with MSDOS or boot disc. (I don't have a windows disc, it was preloaded but i have a gateway recovery disc somewhere).

Please help thankyou.Update: I'm thinking about buying a Hard Drive Enclosure or a IDE to USB adaptor, does anyone have any advice about this?

Will it work and does anyone have an experience using either?I never trust USB when it comes to Data recovery...
This is however a personal opinion and you may hear others...
Your best BET is to hook up the drive as a slave and do this...
I would re-set the jumpers as they were initially and follow This guide...

Since Win2K you can't expect a HDD from one machine to boot successfully in another...
This is by design.
Best of Luck...and let us know.Well I wish someone had told me that using a hard drive enclosure would not do a dang thing, because it did exactly the same thing. The hard drive showed up in CMOS and Disk Management in the exact same way, still with no drive letter assigned.
I tried hooking it up to a vista machine as well, and that didnt help. I tried some recovery software but they didnt work because I had no drive letter so I had no path. So i formatted the disk and now its got a drive letter but I didn't write anything to it and I'm going to try and recover it , and if i cant im going to smash it with a sledgehammer and buy a bigger more QUIET hard drive for this enclosure.Quote

Well I wish someone had told me that using a hard drive enclosure would not do a dang thing, because it did exactly the same thing.

I never trust USB when it comes to Data recovery...