tonight's troubleshooting

[juldea]

So through various configurations of hard drives and RAM this evening, I have determined both that I have a bad stick of RAM (the computer refused to boot when this was the only stick of RAM, instead beeping at me insistently!) and a bad hard drive (when it was the only HD installed, even with all good RAM attached, I got a "BOOT DRIVE NOT FOUND" error.)

It is even possible that one of the two IDE cables I've been using is bad, but it is no longer relevant as the new drive is SATA and I can ditch the old suspect cable.

So, good news: the new drive wasn't a waste of money. Bad news: I still want the data from the old drive. Sadface!

Comments

[juldea.livejournal.com]

So where we're at now is I can see the drive, but any attempts to access it, rather directly or with a file recovery program, causes a spontaneous reboot 10-15 seconds in. The theory is there's an electrical short somewhere. I'm looking for an external USB enclosure to try it on to see if it really is electrical or not. I'm assuming your freezer trick won't work with that kind of problem. ;)