I recently purchased a new computer, and upon recieving it i figured the best way to transfer all my old stuff was to simply install the hard disk from my old computer into the new one as the primary drive, hence having the added space too, i did so, with a little trouble messing about with jumpers and the like, and managed to get it all working ok. Satisfied, i turned the computer off and had some dinner, after dinner i came back to my computer, turned it on, only to find the computer was unable to find either hard drive upon startup, i was confused, having not done anything since it worked, i checked all the connections, tried swapping various cables but still nothing. So i switched the new drive back to primary and the old one to secondary, it now finds the new drive (although it takes a little while finding it) but the old one still gets nothing. So next i tried putting the old drive back into my old computer, and to my dismay, it was unable to find it too. Thats all i can think of to try at the moment. So did i manage to destroy my old drive somehow? or could there be some other problem? If i did destroy it is there any way of recovering the data on it? Sorry if this post is too long, thanks for your time.

Hi, You did not give alot of details on the hard drives (manufacturer) or PCs. But I would guess that you have jumper issues. Some drives don't like to be jumpered (western digital when operating as a lone drive) and some OEM PCs are set for cable select (like some dells i have run across).

Hi the drive still should be good unless you were changen jumpers while comp was powered up. on the new comp after verifing jumpers are correct for master and slave, you may need to go into the bios and be sure IDEs are set for auto detect. if you need to post back with problems give us what IDE cable each hdd is on. master or slave each hdd is set for. if cd drives are on the ide cable. and if bios sees the hdds. what brand and size hdds are.

The drives are an IBM Deskstar 40gb (old) and a Seagate Ultra 80Gb (new). I have both drives on IDE1, my CDRW and DVD drives are on IDE2 and they work fine. Another thing i noticed today is that if you set the old drive to master and new to slave, the bios detects neither, whereas if i set the new drive to master and old drive to slave, it does find the new drive, but still not the old one, it spends perhaps 30 seconds or so looking for it upon startup, but never comes up with anything. Also dunno if this helps but i used a program i found on the Seagate website - DiscWizard - to set up the new drive, it worked initially but as i said when i powered up the computer a second time it had stopped working. Is it possible the program changed something which messed it up? Thanks again.

Setting both drives to cable select stops either drive being recognised, with either cable setup, however unplugging the Deskstar and leaving the Seagate on cable select it works fine. Also another thing i noticed the Deskstar drive gets hot when the computer is on, even though its not being detected, so i guess it can't be completely knackered.

I know your problem! I had the same problem with my 61,5 GB IBM Deskstar! It has something to do with the internal firmware of the harddrive. Obviously IBM has some trouble with quality in that area lately. Go to the following site: http://www.hgst.com/warranty/jsp/index.jsp !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Hitachi now builds the drives for IBM and also handles the warranty! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Download the Drive Fitness Test (DFT). It builds a bootable floppy disk that's able to boot and find the connected IBM drive. Run it but do NOT use the repair cluster or format option yet if you really need your data! I've seen "lost and found" from PowerQuest somewhere on the net (sorry no link!). Try it or another recovery software! In my case the cluster repair didn't work but the format made the hardrive work again. But it crashed again after 3 or 4 months. With the cluster repair I got an error code and called the local support number (see the Hitachi link!). They told me I had to change the drive on warranty and even send UPS to get the drive (important: follow the instructions how to send it!)!!! If you don't have warranty anymore try the format and hope it doesn't happen again (make regular backups or use it for not important data only - games and programs you can reinstall easily)! BTW: My IBM drive was already the replacement because the original drive was a 45 GB that got on diet after 6 months. Suddenly it had only 33,8 GB and the week after I brought it back to my dealer for warranty all 45 GB IBM drive had been gone from the market! I hope that helps!