[ttalwarman]

Hello. I have a Dell Dimension XPS GEN3 that won't boot and instead says, "SATA Primary hard disk device 0 failure. Strike F1..."
I would like to connect the drive(s) to a Dimension 8200 in an attempt to recover some documents since I have them both running Windows xp. Would this possibly void the warranty? And could anyone tell how to go about doing this. Thank you very much.

 

[Deleted090308]

Welcome to TSF. :wave:

There are no SATA ports in the Dimension 8200.
The easiest solution would be to get an external HDD enclosure with an internal SATA connection.
For example this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817364012
More: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...&N=2010090092+1053807123+1054107131&name=SATA

 

[TyDeacon]

Is the computer still under any warranty. If it is then you can void the warranty. Contact Dell about this. Make sure the drives are jumpered properly.

 

[TheShadowFl]

A computer just like that, with two SATA drives in RAID format, was given to me recently. Dell told the owner it was unrepairable, and they sent him a new one. They didn't even want the old one back.

I was totally un-able to get the raid system working again, so I removed the second SATA drive and loaded Vista on the remaining one drive.

On every boot, the bios is still looking for that second drive and I have to press F1 to continue booting. What a pain in the pants.
Typical Dell crap.

There is NO setting in the bios to totally disable RAID.

Anyone foolish enough to run such a PC with RAID should make darn'd sure they have all their data backed up to CD or DVD on a very short backup schedule.

Good Luck,
The Shadow