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When it boots off the compaq drive does it assign it as the C: drive or is it booting off the D: drive when it does this?

If you go into the BIOS setup with both drives installed which one is it showing as the master there?

If it is making the compaq drive the C: drive or showing it as the master drive in the BIOS setup then I would say that it is a problem with the way the motherboard is assigning the drives.

Maybe trying to set the jumpers on the hard drives to cable select if that isn't what your already using and if your are trying that already make the jumpers set for master and slave respectivly just to try something different.

I wouldn't think the MBR would be doing this, the bios should be telling it which drive to boot. I wouldn't think the MBR on the new drive would be trying to boot off the second drive but who knows.

It may just be something weird with the motherboard and the fact that it is a 120 gig drive.

Try to figure out the model number and look for a bios update, maybe you can get some info off the bios boot screen if you can't find it on the motherboard.

You should look in the new hard drive manual for other jumper settings. Sometimes older motherboards will require that you have special jumper settings on the HDD to get it to be recognized. Is it actually finding the new drive when it boots off the second drive?

he already said it boots off the 120GB fine when the other drive isn't connected. so you know the board doesn't have a problem booting the 120.



-syn

The problems arise from the compaq Drive, which i need to salvage data off of. THe problem is that when i hook it up it tries to boot into a bad version of windows 98 (its got issues of its own). the bios reconigizes the 120 gig as the master and the Compaq as the slave. The compaq does have one minor mod on it, its got EZ Max installed (its a maxtor workaround to windows not seeing anything over 9 gigs, ancient tech.) Will running that MDR thing fuck up the other drive at all because i need the data 100% intact to salvage several projects off it.



Relorian

hrm...sounds like a master/slave issue, double check your jumper settings.

Done that. Set the compaq one to slave, the 120 gig maxtor to master. Also done cable select. Its like the compaq drive doesnt want to give up or something.

Originally posted by Relorian

The compaq does have one minor mod on it, its got EZ Max installed (its a maxtor workaround to windows not seeing anything over 9 gigs, ancient tech.) Will running that MDR thing fuck up the other drive at all because i need the data 100% intact to salvage several projects off it.



i'd say it has something to do with that EZ max shit. that's why i asked earlier if it was on the 120 drive, didn't think of asking about the compaq drive. i'm about 80% sure that the /mbr wouldn't screw up getting the data off of it, but just to be safe why dont you do this...



boot it up off a dos disk and copy the data that way? you can use xcopy or xcopy32 to copy all the data recursively (subdirectories included). if the drive is NTFS you wont be able to use a regular dos disk, but i wont get into that unless it is.



i know it will set all the files in 8.3 format but at least then you'll have a copy of it.



-syn

the XP drive is ntfs, the compaq isnt

Originally posted by Relorian

I also tried conneecting a Slave Win98 formatted 10 gig drive. Not only is this a Non booting drive, but its set to slave already... but for some reason it tries to boot off the drive.



If this is still true then I don't see how it could have anything to do with the compaq drive.



If you just need to recover the data off the other drive and you have windows xp installed you might be able to use the xp boot disk from http://www.bootdisk.com/ and get xp to run off the maxtor drive. I don't know how you would do it exactly though since I don't think it has a win.com anymore but it might. If not just install windows 98 or under on the 120 drive and then use the bootdisk for that and you should be able to run the win.com and get it up so you can do your recovering.

One small problem with that. I dont have a floppy drive... the one i had ate it before i could transplant it and im too broke to afford a replacement currently