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richdan 0 Newbie Poster

Hello everyone,
I have a P4 with a WD-2000 Sata HD. Recently it crashed with the blue screen of death with the stop error 000000051. Because of it I can't boot Windows. I am trying to recover my data on it. I want to add a 20g IDE HD as the Master using my extra cd rom and using my dvd as slave.
My problem is the following. When I boot up my IDE HD everything works fine but I can't see my SATA HD.
I was able to see my SATA HD when I connected it to my friends computer that had a SATA HD on it (C:)(E:)
Do I need to purchase another SATA HD for this to work?
Can you help me with a little advise?
Thanking you in advance,
Dan

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Dani AI

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A few concise points for and others: IDE master/slave jumpers do not affect SATA drives. SATA is a separate bus that needs a SATA data cable, a SATA power connector, and an active SATA controller on the motherboard. If the motherboard has no SATA ports or the SATA controller is disabled, the drive will not appear. Buying another SATA disk is not required to recover files — enable or add SATA support, or attach the drive externally.

Checklist you can apply right away:

  1. Verify cables and power: use a known-good SATA data cable and confirm the 15-pin SATA power is plugged in (use a Molex-to-SATA adapter only if your PSU has no native SATA power).
  2. Check BIOS/Setup: confirm the SATA controller is enabled and the drive is listed. Try another SATA port and cable if it is not seen.
  3. If the board lacks SATA: add a low-cost PCI/PCIe SATA controller card or use a USB-to-SATA adapter/enclosure to connect the drive to any working PC.
  4. Recover safely: boot a Linux live USB and image the drive (read-only) with tools such as GNU ddrescue, then work from the image. Avoid chkdsk or writes to the original disk until you have an image.
  5. If BIOS sees the disk but the OS does not, inspect partitions with Disk Management or TestDisk; repair attempts should be performed on an image, not the original.

If these steps do not expose the drive, professional recovery or imaging on a PC that already recognizes SATA is the safest next move.

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