Hi. Im quite new to internal computer parts but we've all got to start somewhere hey? Anyway, my BROTHERS computer went boom and I realised it was the harddrive because I tried putting it into my fully working PC and the same problem occured. However, he had a secondary harddrive that was used for storage purposes and it has some important documents on there. I tried putting it into my PC and i get a Boot Failure: System Halted message. Im not sure why. I know that my main harddrive jumper settings are set to cable select and the one that I was trying to put in are set to slave. Is this the REASON? I dont WANT to mess with the settings if it isnt.

Thank You.If you are trying to retrieve data from your brother's secondary HDD you need to make sure it is jumpered as slave and connected in the MIDDLE section of the IDE cable...
In order for this to work properly your boot drive should be re-jumpered as master and hooked up to the end of the ribbon cable.

CS will only cause hiccups so try this...Patio gives you good advice.  You can also try putting your brothers drive on the cdrom cable instead of master/slave.  Saves a lot of headaches doing the jumper thing.  

Alan <><  I also agree with ale...nice backup advice there !