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After 7 glorious years running my grungy old 2001 Dell 4100 (never again, I declare!), I finally got the blue screen of death. Power down, power back up. Of course, nada. Here are the various diagnostics that don't recognize the (primary master, Seagate something or other) IDE hard drive:
* BIOS * Seagate Diagnostic * GHOST Recovery Disc * Ubuntu Live CD
None of these methods even SEE the primary hard drive. So, it's toast, right? Well, here's the twist. I also have a second hard drive ((primary slave, the old 40 GB Maxtor that came with the system way back when) which I formatted over years ago and use just as storage for the Norton Ghost backups (luckily, every Friday morning). So, it should be easy enough to restore from there, yeah? Well, none of those diagnostics see the second hard drive either. What are the chances of simultaneous catastrophic hard drive crashes on two hard drives? Mind you, all the diagnostics continue to see both a DVD drive and a CD drive. So, here's what I think, because I'm an optimist: It is the motherboard IDE connection, either in the motherboard itself, or in the IDE cable. There's still data on those drives, dammit! So, should I go pick up an IDE to USB external hard drive enclosure, or should I pick up an IDE cable, or should I trash everything?
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