Hi everyone.
I have a freind that has been told that her hard drive is dying.
She has asked me to see if i can pull off some photos that she has on there before it totally dies.
I am confident in doing this but need a little guidance.
I understand that you have to turn the drive into a slave, then i can use my pc to pull of what i need is this correct?
I would like to know if there is anything i should know before going ahead.
Thanks for any help.
John.

If the system has a CD writer, then just burn them to a CD.

I understand that you have to turn the drive into a slave, then i can use my pc to pull of what i need is this correct?
That is basically correct.

Remove the dying drive, and check the label for jumper positions. Set it as a slave drive. Connect it to your computer hard drive ribbon cable on the spare connector, and boot up. You should see the drive in My computer/explorer. Find the files you want to save, and either copy them to a new folder on your original (c:) drive, or burn them to CD.

If the drive is dying, the less you boot it the better.

Hey,man!
If you have an extra hard drive you can easili remove all data located on dying hd to a living one by means of Acronis Migrate Easy 6.0

http://www.acronis.com/products/me/

Hopefully it helps

Couple of notes on slaving.

If you are using Windows, you will only be able to see the files on an NTFS partition (if that is how the partition with the pics is formatted) if your version of Windows is an NT version such as Windows 2000 or XP.

Usually you only need to jumper the slave as a slave but be aware that some masters have two settings; lone master and master w/ slave.

There are also potential problems if the drive is huge in capacity.

Occasionally, some BIOS will require you to enter the setup and set the 2nd drive's parameters via auto before it will be recognised.

Usually there are no problems - but we are here if you need further help/advice.

Hi again
I have tried turning the drive to a slave, but then my computer dosn't recognize it?
There seems to be more than one slave setting.
Am i over looking something or is this drive dead.
Thanks everyone for your help.

What do you mean by "There seems to be more than one slave setting"?

What size is the drive in MB or GB?

Is the drive connected to the same IDE(ribbon) cable as your system's boot drive, or is it connected to the other IDE cable?
If the latter is true, then is another drive also connected to that cable?

Is the IDE cable securely and correctly connected with the colored stripe along the one edge next to the power lead on the back of the drive?

Did you try connecting a different power lead to it?

There seems to be more than one slave setting.
There are usually 3 settings:
1) Master...M
2) Slave...S
3) Cable select.. CS

There seems to be more than one slave setting.
You probably mean jumper settings. What make/model is the hard disk? Look at the printed labels on the hdd, there maybe a jumper settings table.

Thanks guys i figured out which slave setting to use.
I am connecting to my computer by taking out the cables from my 2nd hard drivre and connecting this one to those cables.
When i go to boot up, my computer will not boot, it will not get past the initial mobo set up screen.
This hard drive is from a hewlett packard and is a 20.4 gig drive.
I much appreciate the help you are giving.
All the best John.

Couple of notes on slaving.

If you are using Windows, you will only be able to see the files on an NTFS partition (if that is how the partition with the pics is formatted) if your version of Windows is an NT version such as Windows 2000 or XP.

Usually you only need to jumper the slave as a slave but be aware that some masters have two settings; lone master and master w/ slave.

There are also potential problems if the drive is huge in capacity.

Occasionally, some BIOS will require you to enter the setup and set the 2nd drive's parameters via auto before it will be recognised.

Usually there are no problems - but we are here if you need further help/advice.
Hi Paul
I see that you think i should possibly try to enter the bios to set parameters.
I have never done that before what do i have to do?I'm a little unsure of what you said before.
Thanks John.

Hi guy:
I think you can try to use USB BOX .
It does not need the driver in WINXP;you can directly catch the files you want.
Have a try;it's easy way to get the data;however;the key point is that drive can work.

Each motherboard uses a specific key to depress as the system boots up and which would bring one into the BIOS setup. Commonly it is F2, DEL, etc. The actual one is usually displayed on the screen. If the screens fly by too quickly press the Pause key to hold and the Esc key to continue.