How can I make a HD un-bootable?

[meebiwaa]

I have a friend (i really do) who (software) crashed her HD after an attempted de-frag!  

Is there an easy (dos) commnand that I can use to make the tosted HD un-bootable so that I can boot from my new drive and have the fried drive be ignored?

The old HD was running win2000 and was getting kinda wierd which brought on the de-frag.  I googled aroud and tried all of the fixes to get the HD to boot to 2000 but to no avail.  I have managed to make this work in the past by accident but I need to know how to do it now for real this time!!

I just want to be able to do a normal boot from the new HD in XP (with the un-bootable HD attached) and still get to the old files (via explorer) to save some of files that I can't replace!

Thanks :-?

[Dusty]

If the old drive has been slaved and the system booted from the new drive and you still cannot access files then the old drive may be damaged either physically or electronically.  You could go to the website of the old drive manufacturer and download drive diagnostic software which may come up with a reason for the problem.

Good luck

[downundersteve]

remove old HDD from pc
install new HDD
install windows XP
re-install old HDD
ensure old HDD is on secondary IDE cable (ie slot 2, ide2 it will  prob say on mobo which is which)
restart pc
that's it!
the secondary cable is usually the one the dvd/cd is attached to, you can put both on one cable if it has two connectors on the cable.
if not buy one, it will only cost a few bucks

steva

[soybean]

Is there an easy (dos) commnand that I can use to make the tosted HD un-bootable so that I can boot from my new drive and have the fried drive be ignored?

Yes, you can do what downundersteve said, but I would connect the old drive to the same data cable as the main, i.e. Win XP, hard drive, with the main drive being master and the old drive being slave, as Dusty said.  The master will be the boot drive.  If Windows recognizes the old drive, you may then be able to copy files from it.

[downundersteve]

I suggested ide2 because it is the original drive, ie set to master.
if you put it on the same cable as new drive, (also set to master) there wil be a conflict and not work.

I thought it would be easier to install to id2 than to explain master/salve/jumper position, reading diagram, ask type of drive etc etc.......

[soybean]

I see your point but I think your logic is flawed.  In your first reply, you said, "the secondary cable is usually the one the dvd/cd is attached to, you can put both on one cable if it has two connectors on the cable."  If a hard drive and a DVD/CD drive were on the same cable, he would still need to set master and slave settings.  And, besides, he may have already had two optical drives on that channel.

What he could do, in this case, is temporarily disconnect any optical drives from the IDE2 connector and then connect the second hard drive to it.  That way, no master/slave configuration issues.

[patio]

As he has gone missing for now i'll not offer anything constructive...

[GX1_Man]

I have turned the light off.......