Hard Drive - current one just died

[BlueMage]

Well, I think my main hard drive in my desktop died. She's been going for about 4 years so I guess she's allowed to by now, but still preferably NOT while I'm using it :(

Anyways, I'm reasonably confident that the slave drive (another 40GB one) is still functional. I currently don't have a 3.5 caddy, though I intend to pick one up today if possible. I'm not sure if it's just the Windows install that's fucked up - it won't boot, either from hard drive or from CD, failing at random points (some times it'll get halfway on the graphical indicator, sometimes a third, sometimes not past 0) - but if it is, I intend to save what data I can.

However, I'm thinking of upgrading to a SATA drive - both of these drives are PATA. My mobo can handle SATA so that's not a problem. The only thing I want to know is are there any issues with running SATA drives and PATA drives concurrently in one rig?

Any help much appreciated.

[Pyrion]

Not really, AFAIK.

Just to change your remaining PATA hard drive to single (particularly if it's a WD, as they're anal about this sort of thing), and don't hook up any other devices on that PATA bus, as PATA slows the maximum transfer rate to that of the slowest device. So if you have an ATA100 and an ATA33 drive on the same bus, both will access at ATA33 speeds.

If you really intend on saving the data, disconnect the dying hard drive and wait on trying to recover stuff off of it until after you've got Windows installed on your new drive. Then hook it up as Slave (remember to put your working drive as Master). Then boot into Windows normally and try to get whatever you can off of it, though you may want to check each file for corruption once it's all copied off, cuz I ended up losing files on a now-dead drive despite successful copying to a backup drive. YMMV though, if the drive's dying as mine did, then it may end up unaccessible by the time you try to get everything off of it.

Course, I saw my previous hard drive's death coming several days away, when Windows spat out a CRC error (followed by a systray balloon saying it had stepped the drive down to ATA66) for no apparent reason.

[BlueMage]

Thanks Pyrion. Took it in to get checked today, as I did some exhaustive testing and determined the hard drive is in fact fine - mobo had non-catastrophically failed.

[Pyrion]

Good to hear, still though, if there's anything you want backed up off the drive, now's the time to do it.

[phill]

Good to hear, still though, if there's anything you want backed up off the drive, now's the time to do it.

It is always a good time to backup your hard drive, those people that walk down the street with a smile on their face, those people back up on a regular basis :P