Hard Drive “NOT READY” problem
Hardware set up
I’ve been using two (2) Maxtor 200 G hard drives
with an AMD 2800 processor on a
Biostar M7NCD Pro Motherboard
Windows XP Professional
(Rescue HDD is using Windows 98 probably 2nd edition)

The original problem was that following the hurricane whichever hard drive we used to start the computer it would quickly reboot itself before even scandisk or other programs could be run. Windows repair indicated the drive needed to be repartitioned…
Well it seemed like it would be fairly simple take a hard drive from another computer, use it to boot the computer, and then copy any files I need to CD, and then reinstall windows and no data would be lost.
The other (available) hard drive (Seagate maybe 10 G) was taken from an old 350 AMD running Windows 98, it installs and operates the computer without any problem, EXCEPT when you try to access the problem (MAXTOR 200 Drive) I am informed that it is not READY. I get this same error message whether the 200’s are installed as slave on the same IDE cable as the Seagate or if they are installed as Master and Slave on the other IDE cable in place of the CDRW and DVD.
It seems either these HDD’s have gotten messed up much worse than expected, or perhaps (HOPEFULLY) I am getting this error message as these drives are so large that the old WIN 98 operating system just doesn’t know how to handle them.
If that were the case then (assuming if can locate a HDD with Windows XP) would my original plan work?
Since the programs and files should still be on the drives unaltered I would I need any special software to copy them and if so what software programs would you recommend under these circumstances?

I would test your Maxtor drives, one at a time, removing all other drives during test.

Here is Maxtor's diagnostic test:

PowerMax

Save it to comp then create a bootable floppy.

If the drives pass test I would recommend booting from your xp CD & do a repair install.

As to backing up to cd's you would need a 3rd party program.
Here is one that has a free trial:

SuperCool ZIP Backup

Or else with MaxBlast from Maxtor you can copy the entire drive to a clean drive if you wish.

Max Blast 3

Hope this helps!

Windows 98 does have a limit on how much it can see - I can't remember what the limit is but I'm 99% sure that it won't read a 200Gb drive.

If there is an update for it (you never know, you might be lucky), you'll find it here:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads

Let us know how you get on