If you connected it and jumpered it as a slave drive it shouldn't be the boot drive, the master would be the boot drive.  If you set it as a slave, and the drive with your XP OS on it as master with a slave, it should boot to the XP drive.  Did you check your BIOS for the boot order? You should be able to copy the info off the slave drive if it is set up right.  If you have eliminated the above issues and it still doesn't work, then yes it is possible the drive is on its way out.



Peter <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>When you connected the slave drive, did you change the jumpers on the boot
>drive to indicate that a slave was present? Some drives require this.
>
>Peter
>----------------------------------
>[log in to unmask]
>
>-----Original Message-----
>I very, very carefully,having never done this before, attached the hard
>drive from the problem computer into my own as the slave.  The BIOS
>recognized it as a slave, but it wouldn't boot, it said :"disk error-press
>any key to continue"?  Does this mean the hd is dead?  Or am I forgetting to
>set something?  My computer uses Win XP and the other one uses Me, make any
>difference?  I am terrified of hurting my own computer!  Have I maybe not
>connected the hd correctly, I followed instructions about the IDE cable and
>power cord.  I really, really would like to copy the info off this hard
>drive onto a CD.  Help.
>Dianne
>

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