"lorraine" wrote in message
...
Okay, I took my mother-in-laws crashed HD to the computer guy and he can't
get the HD to be recongnized. He suggested that I buy a refurbed HD (same
model) and he'll swap the controllers and see if he can get her data off
of
the HD. She has 10 years worth of small business records on it...no back
up.

To make a long story short, that didn't work. So, I've got a refurbed HD
with all good parts and an old HD with who knows what bad parts. I figured
I've got nothing to lose at this point. She definitely doesn't want to
spend
the 1000 bucks to send it out and see if they can get the data off of it.
So...(yeah, I know you're not supposed to) I opened up both HD cases and
swapped the disk...so that now the disk with the data is on the hard drive
with the good parts. I hook it back up and now the HD light comes on (it
didn't before) but the disk doesn't spin...it's like it's locked. And I
get
an invalid drive error message. Since I've already gone where you're not
supposed to by opening up the cases...anyone have any ideas what else to
try? I also have nothing to lose but the 45 dollars for the refurbed drive
so I'm willing to give just about anything a shot. I really don't want to
have to help her re-enter the past 3 years worth of data on her new hard
drive. I was able to copy 7 years worth from her old computer.

Lorraine



I really don't think you should have done that - the best thing to do is to
try and put the proper disks back into the refurb drive and use that (If you
are able to know ( - Get the other one to a data center who deals with this
stuff.