Hard drive cannot be seen in new Dell.

[southnjess]

People,

I have a problem with a hard drive from another system (80 gb, external USB) that has alot of files that I need to get off it. The problem is that I hooked it up to the new Dell and it cannot access it, If I look at the properties for the drive it shows "RAW" format and zero data on the drive, now this drive has about 30 gb of data on it (as it was never formatted) that needs to be saved to the new Dell, the only problem is that even though it can be seen, it can't be accessed.

I had a problem like this before where I had to take control of the drive (Os was XP Pro at the time) so I had to disable simple file sharing to take the control, the only problem is that this Os is the home version which dosen't allow the option to disable "simple file sharing"

Anyone have any thoughts on how to get access to this drive, Other than upgrading to XP Pro or just being able to see the data on it or converting it from "RAW" ?

 

[mechBgon]

Booting up WinXP Home Edition in Safe Mode will allow you to get at the NTFS security/permissions/ownership stuff, see if that gets you anywhere.

 

[bsobel]

Originally posted by: mechBgon
Booting up WinXP Home Edition in Safe Mode will allow you to get at the NTFS security/permissions/ownership stuff, see if that gets you anywhere.

If the system is seeing it as a RAW drive, something else is going on (the system sees the drive, but doesn't think it's formatted). Did you have any 'weird' software on the other box that might have changed the partition type or done anything special with the drive?

Bill

 

[southnjess]

mechbgon I will try that to see if it works.

Also

bsobel:
I just reinstalled the Os on the Dell (so I formatted the C drive) and I had the usb drive hooked up to the pc while I was doing it( but this drive didn't get formatted).

 

[southnjess]

Bump, still need help on this one.

 

[redgtxdi]

If it's a complete drive enclosure (not just a generic internal IDE that you *stuck* into a generic enclosure) then you might want to install or download the specific drivers for that drive. I had a similar problem w/ a Maxtor external, except my problem was w/ Win98.....(Ya, that was a problem in itself).....but once I d/l'd the specific drivers for it, things were smooth.

Just a thought if you hadn't already done this.