Great success! I got the other SATA to work, now I have FOUR HDDs grinding away, not a moment too soon.

After some more backing up...I plan on using the Computer Management panel to rename the C drive as something else, and rename L to C, then shutting down and yanking the sick IDE drive, then trying to install from the DVD drive.

Ta Dah! Thanks for the help, looks like it's licked. I'll post again when I'm ready to format.

Congrats, Paul. Glad to hear things are looking up!

Good to hear you got going again Paul.

Might be time for - disks are cheap, lost work is not.

RAID kind of scares me. RAID 0 is REALLY scary. I might look at 1 on my next big upgrade, these disks are too small to use 1. I'm also going to get another external USB drive, those things are handy and look cool.

That's crappy.

Just got through ANOTHER round of HDD troubles myself.....KERNEL_DATA_INPAGE_ERROR, BSOD, Delayed Write Failed, endless reboot cycles, the works.

I think I fixed it though, the black wire was falling out of the HDD power cable, I re-routed the cable . After some more CHKDSK both SATA drives seem OK.

I almost picked up a new drive...it's funny I asked my local Radio Shack what they had for SATA...80Gb for 90$. In Alberta my son can pick up a 250Gb for 50$!!! Gotta love small towns....

My brother sent me two Maxtor II drives (300 & 500 GB) which worked fine until he tried to install them on his new dual core Vista system. He was hoping I could get the data off of them. My system, XP Pro 3 single core, does not recognize the drives either ... just says there is an err reading the drives as they tick away forever. I am wondering if the fat table is screwed up .... you know, messed up when he by tried to install it on a 64bit sys.

I was thinking perhaps there is also driver conflicts. But I am not any wiz with this stuff. We just want to get his book research data, spreadsheets, and his manuscripts off the drives. He called around but the tech services to get that data were very expensive. Its looking pretty bleak right now.

My experience has been that once it's in the "unrecognized and ticking" phase, it's dead...

SUPER BUMMER!!!!

Well, we'll to trash them then. He has already bought a Maxtor 'book' drive. I'm not looking forward to telling him about these. Maybe he can reassemble some of his work .... its a real time stealer.

Thank you for your response. I didn't want to keep spending time on this if it was hopeless.

I know you said you have to wait, but hard drives are cheap now and will most likely stay that way for at least a while. This means you might not have to wait as long as youd think. Depending on the size you need, pricing is roughly:

1.5 TB $130
1 TB $100
750gb $75
500gb $50

Here is a link for a decent 750gb: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822152100

Wow, where are those prices from? I just paid 150 for a 1Tb external. I wanted both usb 2 and eSATA...no go. The perm guy said manufacturers are reluctant to get on board with eSATA and sure enough there were none on offer. That's OK, I am kind of boggled at the capacity and USB 2 seems plenty zippy enough.

Holy cow! ONE TERABYTE. That's amazing. My box now has four drives with a total of 1.57 Tb. Whew.

In Alberta, a 250 Gb SATA is 50 bux.

Newegg has some great deals. I spent about $160 on a 1 tb back in June. Here is a link I found with a quick search for $140 for a 1.5tb.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822148337

I loved newegg when I was in the states

Wish there was a newegg in the UK.

I'm going to get a 500 gb hard drive on Friday. Going to run about £50

I'm SO glad I have my Iomega 250 gb external!!!

This is the first time I've ever had hard drive problems. In the past the only problem I would have is running out of room. Now I have plenty of room but the bleeding thing won't work.

I didn't even think about the fact you are out of the States. Glad to hear that you have an alternate drive to use for now.

I just got rid of 14 external drives (some USB, some in NAS arrays) by getting three internal 1.5 TB drives. My office is way quieter now.