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Background: we had an old pc that was connected to some old label printers but that pc does not boot up anymore. That pc was 32bit windows xp and the software for label printer only works on 32bit xp. So I install xp on a old windows 7 pc that had a serial port for the printers, and I got the old label software and printer drivers installed.

But I want to get the templates off the old hard drive for the label printer software. So I tried to connect the old HD to replacement pc as a slave ( on the same connection as the CD drive). The pc/ Bios recognises the HD and when windows xp boots up it see the drive but i get an error when I try to open the drive "f:\ is not accessible, the request could not be performed because of an i/o device error

This is the old pc HD i'm trying to add. enter image description here

This is the HD in replacement PC enter image description here

This is the error msg enter image description here

Update : The 250 drive is working fine, it's the 40gb drive I'm trying to access, but the they r 2 different types of HD (different connections, the bad drive has the same connections as the CD drive so I had to put it as a slave to that, as the other drive 250, had a different connection). The 250 is a sata HD (had to change the settings in the bios to get xp to install on it) could it be a issue because they r 2 different types of HD? On the old broken pc does not even boot to bios, think its unlikely both the motherboard and the HD broke at the same time

PaddyD
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1 Answers1

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The error message says it all, but ...

Try running PhotoRec on the drive. (Do it in a box with another drive, and one that you won't be needing for a while, because even with a 250GB drive it's going to take a long time. IF PhotoRec can read the drive, you'll get files - but not file names. Instead, you'll get names of the order File0001, File0002, etc., but with the correct extension (assuming that PhotoRec recognizes the file type. (And it recognizes a lot - there's a complete list at the site.)

If PhotoRec can't read the drive, the next decision is how important it is to get the templates from the drive vs. recreating them by hand. A data recovery service may be able to recover the data by removing the platter(s) from the drive and putting them into a known good one (or replacing the head assembly in the drive with a known good one or whatever they determine is the best thing to do in this particular case - they open the drive in a laminar flow hood and look). BUT IT'S EXPENSIVE.

Edit (for the added nformation):

I can't say if it makes a difference (it will if you got the jumpers wrong), but power down and unplug the data connection from the CD drive for the moment, then power up and see if the drive gets recognized. And remember, an old drive may just have gone bad. (I usually connect and power without mounting, first, with the metal side of the drive resting on my hand, then see if I get a "gyroscopic" effect when I move my hand a little. If I don't, the head could be stuck [One RAP! when the drive isn't powered may fix that]. If it shows signs of not turning no matter what I do, it goes into the "drive museum" - I sometimes keep old, dead drives, with the sealed part removed, as decorations.)

Rukbat
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