Stop a HD from booting

[Jim Planck]

I am trying to download files from a HD out of a damaged computer. I have an enclosure that I mounted the old HD in an ADS enclosure to make it USB2 compatible. I plugged it in and turned it on and the darn thing shut down Win XP and booted the old HD to Win 98 - gave me the "Safe Mode" query screen! Scared the heck out of me!
I unplugged the USB, but had to unplug my new compter to turn it off. When I restarted it all was OK, but I'm afraid to try it again.

What do I do to stop the old HD from booting. I considered going into the Command mode on it and deleting what ever is causing the re-boot, but sadly, I've become "Dos Dumb" from disuse over the past 10 or so years.

Need detailed info.

Can anybody help?

[Scarecrow]

I too have been away from DOS for awhile, but if I remember correctly you can keep your computer from booting from any particular partition from fdisk. by making that partition inactive and your actuall boot partition active.

Not positive this will work so let me know.

[Anonymous]

Previous advice sounds good. Also you could boot your cpu to xp and then plug the bad hd in the USB port. Because it's USB, XP should just recognize it as another drive. Also, next time you need to shut your cpu down, most newer models have a soft power down switch. Just hold your power switch in until the cpu shuts down. Good luck.

Duckman

[Jim Planck]

In case this comes up again, and it will, with so many users trying to transfer data from an old HD to a new computer by way of a HD enclosure like ones made by ADS for connection to a USB Port.

Until it is cleaned off the old hard drive will try to boot using its resident OS. You can stop it by going into BIOS on your computer's original boot-up and disabling the USB Boot in the "Boot Chain."

Usually computers are set to boot in a sequence - First the A Drive, next the CD, next the USB port and last the Hard Drive. Just disable the ability of the USB to boot. It's easy and a "yes/no" kind of situation.

It worked on my new computer and now I have transferred all my old files from the old HD, cleaned everything off of it and have a portable 16G HD that I can move from computer to computer via the USB port.

God Bless USB!