Hey whats up guys, long time no chat. I try to stop in every once in a while. But life has kept me pretty busy!

Though I know I could consult my fellow massassians for a tech question when I have no where else to go.

Ok, well I was building a new rig and I was using an existing case that required some modifying so the back panel of the mobo would fit. Well I got lazy and removed everything but my hdd.. I covered the hdd with a plastic bag and began to take an angle grinder to the case.

My new mobo has SATA capabilities. So I purchased a SATA hd to setup windows on and use the old HDD to recover my data.

Well with the IDE hd connected I can't get windows to boot from the sata drive.. sometimes. If it does boot it will not recognize the ide hd. I did not set the ide drive to slave. Though, when it has power to it, it makes weird clicking noises.. Did I fry the hd from the vibration of the cutting tool? How can I attempt to access this drive and save it? Help

triple check to make sure your pins are set right

If it's making funny clicking noises, in my experience, that's not a good sign. If I were you I'd boot from some other media (live Linux, other computer, etc.) and start yanking what you can off of there ASAP. Hopefully it's good enough yet to do that. Good luck with whatever you do. Hopefully it's nothing, and I'm paranoid. Expect the worst, hope for the best, but as far as most computer problems are concerned it's probably the worst...

This all reminds me of my computer problems. I build this rig last summer, and since the first time I turned it on, sometimes the HDD will freeze when I'm booting up and not show a screen at all. It then goes into an endless loop of checking CD, Floppy drive, and the HDD. The "reading" LED light is always on.

I sometimes have problems when I turn off my computer for a while, turn it back on, and it'll freeze. Eventually this goes away if I leave it on for a long period of time (like now).

This has happened as I replaced 2 HDD's.

SATA II non raid

Ok well it's not so much a click as it could be a 'beep' coming from the hd. In a pattern. I opened my case and tried to install 2 other hd's but it still wouldn't boot.

I have this older comp with ubuntu 7 on it. And when it attempts to boot the slave hd (the one with problems) it wont boot either.

The Mobo has a 3rd set an IDE port, but it's missing 3 pins rather than 1. I tried connecting the hd to that but it acted like it wasn't there. And no beeps.

Clicking noises?
Like the borked HDD i have over here make?
Its borked.

I never thought I'd say this, but I agree with Tiberium, assuming borked means broken. I've had two hard drives make the clicking noise of death. It won't be long before it cannot be read at all, get all of your data that you want to save off that drive immediately.

Yes that is what I am tring to do. Get some data off but I can't figure out how.

Try using a linux live CD. If your ubuntu install isn't seeing the data though, that's a bad sign. Linux is a lot more forgiving of failing disks than Windows is.

If you really want a top-notch rescue/maintenance distro, Knoppix is the way to go.

I've found stuff like Siren's BootCD to be better for disk and partition recovery. Of course, they are of questionable legality.