Have you put them back the same as they were before ? i.e the disks are same order on ribbon cables ?

Have you changed any jumpers on drives ? If so put them back to original settings.

Also make sure all power cables and ribbon cables are seated correctly on each drive.


Let us know how you get on.

Denis

in the begining, i put everything back like before and i tried it that way three of four times, but then i tried switching it up with master/slave rather than c.s. and now i have [primary HD + second HD] on 1st IDE cable and [DVD drive] on 2nd IDE cable in that order -all c.s.

Hi,

This what I would do using jumpers rather than cs

1) Connect only the boot disk to ide1 cable with jumpers making it a master.
Check it boots ok Setting bios as it comes up.

2) Connect second hard drive to same ide cable, setting jumpers to slave, and setting bios as it comes up.
Check you can see dive in windows explorer

3) Connect 3rd hard drive to second ide slot with disk jumpers set to master. Boot again checking bios etc. Check you can see it in windows explorer.

4) Add DVD to second ide, setting jumpers to slave, etc etc

Please let us know how you get on

you're a friggen' genius! can't believe i didn't think of that... everything works fine, but my third HD, 'Aux 2' (yes, i name all my hds...). i'm pretty sure it's shot, it spins up fine and after a while, it'll heat up like normal, but it's a no-show in BIOS. dunno if you have any suggestions for data recovery, but thanks for all the previous help!

Thanks - kind of you to say.

Before I give up on disk I would try swopping it with second drive (changing jumpers, of course) and see if you get same results.

Do you get a drive letter showing up in your list of drives ? If you don't then you could also change DVD drive letter to P or Q so it is away from hard drive letters. Then see what happens.

Then if no go I would put disk in external caddy which plugs into usb port and see if you can get data off. I have found it works sometimes when it would not work via ribbon cable, don't know why. Then you

Then it is a shame you are not in UK, there is a company in Birmingham I have used for data recovery who don't charge the earth. Others here might know companies in US you are good.

Good luck

Denis