hi Dean,tks a lot for ur valuable input on the subject.i took up ur advice
and proceeded.i think at this stage i need to give some additional info not in my first post

my non working pc (in which i dont have space to reload os and which i am trying to do by creating space)has a quantum fireball hdd of 4 gig and partitioned into c and d of equal capacity.win os resides on c
 my dell has a maxtor model 1c6a-1efc of 7 gig and all of it in a single logical drive c

i took ur input and connected the dell maxtor as slave and the quantum as master.bios showed as such.saved and exited.but while loading os i got a "invalid system disc error"and inspite of 2/3 ctrl/alt/del same error.

so i powered off and connected the maxtor as primary master and quantum as slave and booted up.when i double clicked my computer it showed c,d,and e and also the floppy and dvd player in the dell.but the problem now is that logical drive d which is my logical drive c in the non working pc has got the windows application icon whereas "c" and "e" have got the storage icons.

when i double click c,and e they all show all my data and programs but if i double click "d" i get a msg saying i need autorun.exe program to run this drive
and asks me where to find it!when i went into dos mode and typed D:\DIR P\ i get a msg saying "volume in drive d has no label and volume serial is 1c6a-1efc

if i simply type D:\dir it scrolls up like lightning and i can see only the last 8/10 files!

i will greatly appreciate if u can guide me how to proceed further.tks again and have a very nice day--venkat viswanathan

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