I have several hard drives that won't boot or be accessed.

The drives were initially formatted as bootable;  the drives were never disk compressed;  the drives worked perfectly when I used them before.

1 is Fugitsu 10GB
1 is Maxtor  20GB
1 is Western Digital  420 Megabyte

I don't think I can hear the Fugitsu or the Maxtor spin.
I can hear the Western Digital drive spin constantly, but it is inaccessible.

They do have IMPORTANT documents on the drives.

Does anyone KNOW if drives LIKE these with similar problems are reparable / fixable?

Thank you for your helpTim Turner..... What operating system are you using ?
Do these drives have o/s on them or were they just storage ?
Why did you cease using then originally ?

let us know

dl65  
I am using  Windows XP.

The hard drives have an OS loaded on them, along with file storage.

The Fugitsu 10GB  has Win ME
The Maxtor  20GB  has Win ME
The Western Digital  420 Megabyte has Win 95

I stopped using the drives last year after buying a larger hard drive  )160 GB Maxtor.  I disconnected the drives and put them in an anti-static bag for storage.  
I didn't think I would need them, but last week I found out my files are on those disks.

Thank you for any help.

TimTim Turner.....Do you mount the drives in your pc as the slave with your 160 maxtor set as the master ?


let us know

dl65  I have used all THREE ways:

-One drive with jumper set to Solo

-Maxtor 160 Drive as master and one of the non-working drives as slave with the jumpers configured correctly for the master / slave settings (one drive master / other drive is slave)

-I tried the Cable select setting for both drives, and I have disconnected one of the drives while leaving the attached drive as Cable select

-I still don't hear or feel the Maxtor 20 or the Fugitsu 10 spin up once the power is turned on (the drives are connected to the power cable and the data cable), but the  Western Digital 420 MB definately is spinning, but the computer cannot access or see the attached WD 420 drive.

Is there a simple way to determine if the heads of the Fugitsu 10 and Maxtor 20  has crashed into the disk platters and/or the disk rotation mechanism has quit spinning the platters?  

Thank you for your suggestions and help,Tim Turner...... ok ...the 420 mb drive with win 95 on it is formatted FAT and I dont think win xp will READ that ......Does the drive show up in bios or in my computer when its installed ......

If you go to the maxtor site http://www.maxtor.com/portal/site/Maxtor/menuitem.3c67e325e0a6b1f6294198b091346068/?channelpath=%2Fen_us%2FSupport%2FSoftware%20Downloads%2FATA%20Hard%20Drives&downloadID=22
D/L powermax .......

dl65  
Are they set in the bios........options......detect hard-drives..They are set in the BIOS as auto-detect.

What spec have you got??how many drives have you got in your  pc......are any of them external......more info..Only 2 internal hard drives installed,
Athlon 2800,
Win XP,
512 MB Ram
can you see the drives in the disk management///////control panel admin tools....the drives you have indicated have been f.a.t formated.......you will find a ntfs  fat reader.....like this>>.http://www.ntfs.com/products.htm..      you  also could do this>>>>>.http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/winxppro/deploy/mgrtfset.mspxBy the way, Windows XP will read FAT