Hi everyone,

this story is a bit long but please bare with me
I have a seagate 7200.8 250 gig IDE drive which on my xp desktop was only recognised as a slave drive .

It used to be my xp master drive and has got a copy of xp on it. Then a power surge zapped my motherboard and after installing a new Motherboard the only way I could access the drive was to install xp on another drive and use that as the master with my old drive (the one with the problem) running as a slave on the same cable. I should have backed it up then but then my monitor went dead and i couldn't see what i was doing.

I don't have access to the desktop now and only have a laptop. I purchased a ide - usb extenal drive case and vista recognises all my drives except the seagate 7200.8 250 gig. I'm sure there is data on this thing (photos , nested backups of every pc i ever owned until now) has any one got any ideas how i can recover this?

I guess what i really need is a mate with a desktop i could try the slave configuration out on again but currently all i have is the laptop and usb external enclosure. I've considered buying a dual ide to usb enclosure but not sure if that would work given the expense of these things it might be a waste of cash? if you can help please reply

The Seagate is in the external enclosure, correct? Did you reset the jumper to master when you put it into the enclosure? How about trying cable select?

yes I confirm its in an external ide to usb enclosure , yes i tried master, no i get nothing on cable select. I think the drive has the MBR missing but data is otherwise ok. I'm thinking to connect a dual ata cable to the drive enclosure so i can configure 2 drives master/save but then have the problem of how to power the second drive and not sure if it will support this or even blow the thing?

I'm not sure how this would work the way you envision it. I don't see how you can connect it to your laptop although maybe you can figure out a way.