Hard drive recovery w/lost op system

[awilliams197]

I lost the op system on my 40G maxtor hard drive.  Installed new Western Dig hard drive as master with hope of running maxtor as slave to recover data.  Dos detects maxtor but win xp does not so I can't identify the old drive to run recovery software.  Maxtor power max shows PARTITION READ FAIL and SMART ENABLE FAIL.  I just want my data, can I recover it myself by somehow re loading XP Operating System on maxtor as slave without losing data

[Cary_GRant]

Hi there, hope i can help. Be sure your jumpers are properly set. If you try to re-install XP, i seriously doubt you will be able to do it without refomatting your HDD. Though you may try to see if you can use the 'Repair XP' option, this may in fact be your only solution. Other than that, your options are very limited. Also look into a demo of Boot Commander in case you are succesful.

[Raptor]

Maxtor power max shows PARTITION READ FAIL and SMART ENABLE FAIL

I think its as good as wasted.

E-mail Maxtor technical support for a full explanation of the error codes given.