New hard drive... how do I get the data off of the old one?

[Gaidal]

Hello,

I recently did a bit of a computer upgrade. I've got a spanking new 120 GB hard drive which I reinstalled XP on. It's formatted in NTFS. However, when I hook the old hard drive (FAT32) into the new system, I can't get the drive to display in XP. It shows up fine in the BIOS, but I just can't get it to show up on My Computer.

I'd REALLY love to get all of that data off of the old hard drive. Any suggestions?

 

[Willoughbyva]

Sorry nm

 

[Gaidal]

My real fear is perhaps wiping the old hard drive by hooking it up to the new mobo and all.... I suppose if I have to I can swap out motherboards and plug the old hard drive in to copy some stuff to cdr's.

 

[Bloodstein]

Have u got xp installed on the old HD? Not that it should matter, but u never know with these things...

I've never had the problem of old HD not being recognised. Xp does handle Fat32. Hmn...when u say old, how old is it?

Again, not that it should matter, but did u install Xp with the old HD being plugged in?

I'm sure it's something silly so keep asking urself more of the "not that it should matter" questions.....

 

[Nomans]

Gaidal, I have some kind of a naive question. Did you hook up your old HDD as slave drive (using jumper on HDD) while the new 120GB as master, I assume, to the primary controller of the mobo? or basically, did you change the jumper on the old HDD from master to slave when you hook up both HDDs to the mobo? There should be no problem at all to hook up 2 HDDs to the same controller, most likely the primary controller, and usually CD-ROM/CD-RW and/or DVD-Drive will be on the secondary controller. You said both HDDs show up the the BIOS correctly as master (120GB), and slave (your old HDD), while XP simply does not display the old HDD? Don't worry about NTFS/FAT32, Windows XP is familiar with those partition format. Try XP Disk Management to see whether it would display your old HDD in some form. To run XP Disk Management: just right-click (not double-click) on My Computer from the Start Menu, then select "Manager", Windows XP will open Computer Manager program, then go to "Storage" group on the left side panel and select "Disk Management". XP will display all HDDs and CD/DVD-Drives on the right panel.

 

[911paramedic]

Originally posted by: Nomans
Gaidal, I have some kind of a naive question. Did you hook up your old HDD as slave drive (using jumper on HDD) while the new 120GB as master, I assume, to the primary controller of the mobo? or basically, did you change the jumper on the old HDD from master to slave when you hook up both HDDs to the mobo? There should be no problem at all to hook up 2 HDDs to the same controller, most likely the primary controller, and usually CD-ROM/CD-RW and/or DVD-Drive will be on the secondary controller. You said both HDDs show up the the BIOS correctly as master (120GB), and slave (your old HDD), while XP simply does not display the old HDD? Don't worry about NTFS/FAT32, Windows XP is familiar with those partition format. Try XP Disk Management to see whether it would display your old HDD in some form. To run XP Disk Management: just right-click (not double-click) on My Computer from the Start Menu, then select "Manager", Windows XP will open Computer Manager program, then go to "Storage" group on the left side panel and select "Disk Management". XP will display all HDDs and CD/DVD-Drives on the right panel.

I also noticed a new jumper setting that I never saw before when I set up my new drive the other day. There is a master with NO SLAVE setting, and a master WITH SLAVE. You may want to check your new drive to see if it has those settings, I was all messed up when I used the master setting. I tried to fdisk it but it didn't show up ("unable to access disk" or something like that), but it was in the bios just fine.

 

[Gaidal]

Well in Disk Management it shows up as a "free space" partition (but not as a drive letter).

My current setup is the two hard drives on the primary controller and the DVD/CDRW on the secondary controller. I basically just left the settings alone and plugged it in and when they both popped up in the bios I figured I was ok.

One other question... I have an nforce2 board (epox 8rda+) and I can't for the life of me to get 6-channel surround working. I saw something in the instruction booklet about some jumper settings for front/rear panel audio but I couldn't make much sense out of what it was saying (stupid engrish). All adjustments I make with the audio controller in windows only results in changing how the sound comes out through the front speakers.

 

[Gaidal]

Well to give a little bit of an update... I hooked everything back up to the old mb and processor and now the old drive won't even boot off of that (it was the primary drive for that system). It's not saying anything like "disk boot failure" or anything, it just freezes at the screen where all the IRQ's are displayed.

Any ideas? I can't think of HOW in the world this hard drive got completely erased and I'm really hoping that didn't happen.

 

[bub]

Just set jumpers on your new drive to 'master' & to 'slave' on old drive. There is usually a diagram on the drive.

XP should read that old drive. At least mine does.

I updated to XP on new drive and left Windows98SE on the old one.

 

[mmx]

Listen hook it up as the slave, and the new HD as the master. start XP. go to disk management, and try to add a HD, or partition. it won't delete the info, but it might add the HD so that xp can see the HD.

 

[Gaidal]

Yeah I can get it to show up as a lettered drive now, but Windows says it's an unformatted drive.



I think the big problem was that I had that one drive split into two partitions. XP must have freaked out and couldn't recognize the two partitions.

 

[Storm]

Originally posted by: Gaidal
Yeah I can get it to show up as a lettered drive now, but Windows says it's an unformatted drive.

I think the big problem was that I had that one drive split into two partitions. XP must have freaked out and couldn't recognize the two partitions.

Umm may I ask something? Do you have any idea what the suggestions about master & slave are regarding to? I ask this because multiple people have told you thats the way to fix the problem yet you seem to ignore it?

 

[Gaidal]

I have already done that, I don't mean to ignore it. I can get the hard drive to show up in the bios and in windows disk management with the "master/slave" setting or cable select. Unfortunately, the drive ONLY will show up as an unformatted partition in XP. I was only hoping that maybe I was doing something wrong and I could still save all the data off of the old hard drive. Doesn't appear to be the case.

Just to be sure, though, I even hooked up all my old stuff together and now the drive won't even boot off of that, so I must have wiped it somehow. No clue how, though.

 

[RKS]

Originally posted by: Gaidal
now the drive won't even boot off of that, so I must have wiped it somehow. No clue how, though.

I think you can fix that by booting of the XP cd and letting XP use its Repair function since you may have corrupted the Master Boot Record.