I accidently unpluged my hard drive while it was booted up. SHxxxxxxxx what an idiot.

Now it is not even recognized in bios boot up.

Have I ruined my hard drive?

Is there a way to get valuabe files back?

I hope someone can help me.

THANK YOU in advance.

I would guess not. Get into bios and re-detect the hard drive (if it will).

thanks for helping S.

I tried to detect hard drive in bios.
It returns 0 capasity etc.

At ide primarty slave after detection it reads LT-NLR212

Any more help is appreciated.

Paul.

Is the drive infact the "primary slave"? (Is there a primary master listed?)

Go to the hard drive manufacturer's web site and download a diagnostic. You should be able to recover the drive. However your data is another matter.

S:

It was originally set as primary-slave.

A cd burner is set as primary master.

paul

Paul, change the CDRW to primary slave and Hard drive to primary master. the system only bootable on C: drive for the hard drive seek starts up. If you have CDROM set the secondary master.

Well, you need to simplify the problem. For all I know, a voltage spike caused when you unplugged the thing may have damaged something else. It may have damaged the hd, the CD, or the IDE channel on your motherboard.

SO SIMPLIFY the problem.

Find the "bios reset" jumper on your motherboard and clear the bios. IF you cannot find the jumper, remove the motherboard battery, and if possible, short the battery terminals on the motherboard with a jumper clip to drain off the capacitor's charge.

Remove the CDrom drive temporarily.

Enter the bios setup, and check your settings, the boot order, the hard drive settings, etc. Now that it is reset, CHECK every setting

If possible, install another drive you have and boot from a clean floppy. See if you can read and write to the drive in DOS, and if the drive looks "normal."

You probably don't want to try and boot to this drive, because if Windoz is installed, it will try and reconfigure to your system.

If this looks ok, then reinstall your original hard drive (LEAVE THE CD OUT)

RECHECK and reset the hd parameters in bios (or auto detect) the "new" hard drive.

Boot again to a floppy and see if you can read the hd.

If good, then next try booting to the hard drive.

If good, last reinstall the CDrom drive.

DEFINATELY visit some manufacturer's sites and download some diagnostics.

EZbios, EZdrive, MAXblast, and something IBM has, don't remember, off hand.

I have a similar problem..I was helping my aunt install anew wd 5400 30gb hard drive in her gateway 650mhz pc and she wanted to keep her old hard drive in as well. its a quantum 8gb hdd and we put the other hdd in and it reconized the new harddrive and the old in dos but after it booted up on the new drive the old drive disappeared and nothing happened. I powered down the pc and disconnected the new hd and put the old one back in and when i rebooted the pc went to dos A:\ type command interepeter example c:\windows\command.com
i cannot access my hdd at all and when it first boots up it says starting ezbios, then it goes to A:\type command interepeter
and ive tried several things to no avail..it has windows 2nd ed on it and i was able to setup the new hdd with windows restore disks that came with gateway pc, everything is fine with new hdd, but i need the info from the old hdd and i am running out of options.. i tried a startup dos dosk, but that did not work.. i was wondering if disk 1 of msdos 6 would work..if so, ill go buy an origonal copy and try it.The boot sector could be corrupt because of ezbois...i need some help....got to save the info on that pc hdd. i also have program called lost&found...could that fix it..?thanks..