How can I access an IDE and a SATA (both bootable) at the same time?

[chibcharus]

My son's PC died and he wants me to recover some files from the HD. When I install it in a PC with a SATA drive or IDE bootable drives, I am not able to access it. I suspect this is because they are both bootable (Windows XP). Any suggestions?

 

[4745454b]

Does the possibly dead drive show up in the bios? If so, how does it show up in computer management under Administrative tools? As long as we are talking about modern systems here, having multiple boot drives isn't an issue. From the bios, you can select which drive is your boot drive. You could even boot from an IDE drive, restart, change the boot drive to a SATA drive, then boot that OS. I suspect that the drive died when the PC died, which is why you can't access it.

 

[jerreece]

If the hard drive itself is dead, you're pretty much done as far as privately recovering data. You'd have to take it in someplace and spend money to have a professional recovery done if the drive itself is dead.

But as mentioned by the above poster, check in the BIOS and see if it recognizes the questionable drive or not. If it doesn't see anything, the drive may not be responding at all, and may just be dead.