Hello, I have a Seagate 320G (IDE) and it was working perfectly up until last week. I'm currently running Windows XP Home Edition with SP2. At first, Windows requested that I run a disk check on the hard drive because it might be damaged which I did. After the disk check, I wasn't able to log on (the blue welcome screen was up but if you click on the user icon, it wouldn't prompt for a password). So I forced a re-start and Windows automatically kicked in another check disk or CHKDSK. And after the disk check, I got a non-working welcome screen again. Frustrated, I manually shut the computer down. After the shut down, I started up the computer but now the computer doesn't recognize the hard drive and is not able to boot - prompting for me to insert the installation cd - which I did. After selecting the "r" for recovery, the screen says: drive not available or path unknown. Luckily, I have a small and old (I've had since 1995) Quantam Fireball 4G which I have installed Windows XP Home with SP1. The computer was able to recognize the Quantam Fireball but it didn't see the Seagate which was also hooked up. (Seagate is Master and Fireball is slave but booted from slave drive.) There are many important programs and files on the Seagate which I need and I would like to know at this point if the Seagate is repairable or recoverable. Thanks in advance!
Switch the Master/Slave configuration around so that that old Fireball is Master, and the Seagate is the slave. If the computer doesn't recognize the Seagate, after you boot up, you will have to get some recovery program to get whatever you can off the Seagate. If you are not successful, there are companies that do do recovers, but they aren't inexpensive.
