Unrecognizable Hard Drive

[Eric]

Ok, this seems like a pretty typical problem, but I cannot figure out what is going wrong.  Here's the story...

I just recently bought a new computer.  I transfered most of the stuff I wanted on the old computer through floppy discs.  However, there was something rather big that I couldn't use floppys for.  Rather than using common sense, I decided I could just take out the old hard drive and hook it up to another computer.

I was attempting to take out the hard drive (1Gb) out of an old Micron running Win 95.  It has a Pentium II and I think about 233 Mhz, and put that into a Dell running Win ME.  I thought I knew what I was doing, but I didn't.  I at first tried to install the hard drive without switching the jumpers (in other words, both hard drives were set to master).  Obviously my computer wasn't recognizing it and in fact my computer froze.  I couldn't figure out why it was freezing.  So then my friend had the brilliant (well not so brilliant) idea of connecting the two computers while they were both on.  Luckily we didn't kill ourselves, but I have to admit that the old Micron was imporperly shut down several times.

I then wised up and realized one needed to be set to slave.  I did that with the old 1Gb hard drive.  However, my newer computer still didn't recognize it.  Fine I thought, and so I installed it back into the old Micron.  Then I borrowed a flash drive from my friend and went to recover my files that way.  However, when I went to turn it on, it said it failed to find a proper boot disk.  Upon entering setup I realized it was not even recognizing that the hard drive was there.  I checked all the cables and everything is good.  In fact, I even tried switching cables, and every time the cd rom and the zip drive are recognized, but never the hard drive.

The files are not absolutely necessary to get, but I was planning on giving the computer away to someone that really needs one and I told them that I'd get it to them soon (this was before the accident).  Is there anyone out there that can help me?

Thanks

[Raptor]

What kind of hard disk are you talking about?

Did you check to see if the BIOS recognizes your hard disks, and if not, did you set it to auto-detect?

[Eric]

When I said hard disk, I meant my hard drive (I hope that answers the question).  When I go into BIOS it does not recognize that anything is there.  I have set it to auto detect (several times actually), tried setting it back to default settings, but still nothing.

[Eric]

I just realized you may have been asking me what kind of hard drive I am using.  If this is the case, I am using a Maxtor 541DX 20 Gb hard drive (I don't know why I said 1 GB before).

[Raptor]

I meant the type of hard disk, yes.

I donot quite understand what you mean with

So then my friend had the brilliant (well not so brilliant) idea of connecting the two computers while they were both on

You should E-mail Maxtor tech support and explain what has happened.

http://www.maxtor.com/portal/site/Maxtor/?&epi_menuID=0824c7a6b4e96a26d99844a791346068&epi_baseMenuID=976d37cd478c5826433f226075b46068&channelpath=/en_us/Support&epi_menuItemID=0824c7a6b4e96a26d99844a791346068

[MalikTous]

uhh, Did you set the jumpers on the Micron's drive back to Single/Master?

[Roy]

I have had a similar problem. I was trying to save data from a friend's hard drive by removing his hard drive and connecting it to my own computer (as a slave), then copying the data to mine.  However, my system will recognize the drive but only shows its contents as a recycled folder. No other information or data is shown. My friend's hard drive is set as slave when connected to my computer, and the auto detect on my system is set to on.

Any suggestions?