Second Hard Drive Showing as Recovery???? Any Help, Please.

I had an old hard drive laying around that didnt work, it had some files missing and was replaced with a new one. So... recently, i came across this hard drive and decided to see if i can recover the files that where on it. I plugged it onto the slave connector and set the jumper to slave. I boot up the pc and entered BIOS, it reads and shows the hard drive. Now when i enter "my computer" it shows as "HP Recovery". Also, it shows that it has 2gb and its an 80gb hard drive. how can i recover my old files??? i would also want to format it and install Vista. ANY suggestions?

 

What do you mean by "didn't work"? Wouldn't spin, wouldn't boot, wouldn't read, wouldn't?... Was this a boot drive or a purely data drive?

System files or data files?

Trying running a chkdsk /f on the errant drive to see if it can get its old identity back.

Dick

 

this use to be a boot drive(windows XP). Had some system files missing that wouldnt allow it boot nor use a boot cd.

 

device manager does show its a maxtor hard drive, so it is reading it.

 

Let us know if you are successful in running a chkdsk /f on the drive. You may have to boot into Safe mode for a cmd: prompt.

Dick