The Time Sink

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I don't do much tech stuff here, but I'll finish off one that started off last week on Bob's pages. To recap, John Vogt had a hard drive trapped in an old box. The box wouldn't boot and he wanted the data from the drive. He managed to get the box out following Dave's advice about using vise grip pliers and was looking for further direction through the jungle of HDD recovery.

I think the answer Dave posted Sunday is the better one; but I'd sent this one to John before he read Dave's:

John,

Assumptions:

You have a bootable box.
You only have one HDD and maybe a CDROM on that box.
You are at least at the "a little knowledge is dangerous" stage.

With that in mind, I'd install that HDD as the second HDD on your new system, at least until you can pull your data (and perhaps permanently).

With that in mind, I'll lead off with an outline and let the other guys fill in what I miss:

You'll have to make sure your current HDD is set as a "master". I don't see how it could be otherwise on a new box, but...

Check the HDD itself, your manual, or the manufacturer's website for where the jumper is supposed to go for a "master" device.

You can practice this information gathering for your older HDD as you will want to configure that as a "slave" device. Same drill: find the information and reset the jumper. I say "reset" as that drive is likely set as a "master". ...and you do not want two 'master' devices on the same IDE channel.

Three paths now:

1) If you have an IDE cable (wide one that looks like the one that you disconnected the HDD from on the old machine) with an plug open on it, plug your old drive into the cable and also into a power cable.

2) If you only have one cable that goes to your existing HDD and the CD, you'll have to disconnect the CD from the IDE cable and use that end for your old drive. Likely ditto the power cable.

3) If you have a second IDE cable going to your CD, you could simply detach it and connect it (and power) to the old drive.

If any of those works out okay, boot your machine and get into your CMOS setup. Hopefully you'll have a BIOS that will allow you to 'auto-detect HDDs'. Keep whatever it has to say about your existing drive and let it find your old drive. Presuming it can find it, save the new configuration and allow the machine to boot.

You will likely end up with either an additional set of drive letters (D:, E:, F: or whatever) if you currently have one big C: drive, or a mixed bag where the old drive's C: becomes your new D: and the others are added on to the end of the string (as I recall your drive was partitioned?).

If you've made it this far, you can use Explorer to move things around to wherever you'd like. If you had a spare plug on the cable, you can even leave the old drive in this machine after finding suitable mounting. Otherwise, they make nice paper weights.

My guess is that Bob and Dave will have a line or two to add to this; I'd wait until they chime in before proceeding.

Dan

...and a follow up:

A detail on the second channel gig: just take the cable the old HDD was on from the old computer and plug it into the new mother board. That connector will either be the open jack next to the one that your present HDD is connected to or the one the CD cable is plugged into. 'Course, if your CD is already on the second channel, you can disconnect the IDE and power cables from the CD and use those. ...and mess in an area that *might* be easier to access than the motherboard's IDE jacks.

John's response to all of us (personal notes removed):

Thanks for your help. I trusted Win 98SE to detect the drive and everything went well. I now have everything I wanted to save.
Thanks again,
John Vogt

Again, Dave's solution is the better one in that it will prevent certain types of mischief Windows may cause when it accesses that old drive, especially if you use multiple partitions.

Suggested reading for anyone who designs user interfaces: User Interface Design for Programmers. ...good enough to print out and give copies to the head geek and the webmistress.

Short bursts lately on this site as the evenings have been a little hectic. But a gem or two can slip in anyway<g>...

Well, John is looking for a job (or maybe not???? I haven't checked in yet today); and Tom is always looking for new challenges... Perhaps one of them can try this one on for size! Man, I'll stay here in sunny California for the time being. ...or head over to Moshe's place.

On the job front for me, Janeen and I spent Tuesday in Kings County checking on the various stations our outfit had set up down there. ...and it was a day trip; we put in something like 150 miles visiting three towns. Whew. All in all, it made for a good day out of the office. We picked up some information we needed regarding storage capabilities and we both got a chance to eyeball the facilities we are supplying. But it made for a long day... Today we integrate that data with the order information from the last two weeks to see if we can pull a trend or two out of the pile. Then we'll work on the policies we'll put in place to automate things for us.

I guess it will be short posts all week here... There's a tidbit or two yesterday over on the alternate site regarding my contacts with TPC. ...and I spent most of last night playing with RedHat 7.

That was most interesting. Once again, a distro has brought some new things to the table. ...and messed up other things. <sigh> The good news is that I can tweak their setup to get a very nice full screen image going on the laptop. ...after I run Xconfigurator from the command line. WT??? It doesn't start in GUI mode? Nope; not on the workstation flavor I installed on the laptop or the server version I threw on the test bed. No, I don't know why.

It did find my wireless cards on both machines; no distro has managed that on the first try before. ...and it not only found the cards, but also set up communications between them as evidenced by the blinky lights. Unfortunately, I'm not privy to the communications yet since I haven't managed to get that far in my machete hacking through the distro jungle.

Bluefish downloaded okay and appeared to install okay (I mean we're talking Red Hat and RPMs here<g>), but I can't access the program. No, I don't know why yet. Nor do I care. All of this stuff falls under playtime for me; I hang out at the kitchen table and enjoy the family time while I try various combinations of things. Sooner or later, I stumble on to something that works for me...

Today's post is brought to you by the letters “E”, “M” and “T”; and the number “80”. 'Cause if they don't have an eighty percent or better on their quizes by the close of class today, they cannot return on December 2 and take their written final.

...because "Good Enough" isn't when we're talking people's lives.

Above average or better... That's who makes it to the next hurdle. ...and not all will. ...and that's the name of that tune.

I see that Tom has another partner in his latest venture. I dunno'; former employees of the PDR of Berkeley... Be careful Tom, you might end up hosting www.freethechickensfromthewarlock.com <g>.

A late post for me... Last night, I just said the heck with it and went to bed. An interesting event followed: I slept all night. I heard Shelley get up; and the next thing I was cognizant of was the sound of the shower.

Now, Shelley won't make any extra noise on the one day I get to sleep in; so I wondered why she was showering right after she got up. I mean, church isn't for hours yet...

Oh, it's been hours. I'd fallen back asleep.

...and right now that bed looks mighty inviting. 'Course that may be a side effect of the baked pastrami and jack cheese sandwich I just finished a little while ago. Maybe the game. ...from the recliner. ...in the kicked back position.