Trying to use my old XP drive as a slave in new system. Win XP won't recognize it!

[knightc2]

I just built a new machine. Soltek SL-75FRN2-L, AMD XP 2100, 2 256MB Crucial PC2100, 120GB WD SE drive, fresh Win XP Pro install, etc...
Anyway, I had an ECS K7S5A with the same memory, AMD XP 1700, and an 80GB WD drive with Win XP Pro. I just setup the new system and I am trying to place my old drive from my ECS system into the new system so I can transfer some information to my new drive. The bios correctly sees the old drive as the primary slave, but Win XP Pro does not see this drive. It boots up as if it doesn't exist. Any ideas on how to get Windows to see this drive? I need my old data off of it!

Thanks in advance.

 

[loup garou]

Is one drive NTFS and the other FAT32?
Also go to Administrative Tools>Computer Management>Disk Management and see if the slave is there. If so, make sure it's set up correctly.

 

[knightc2]

Both NTFS with XP Pro installed.

 

[loup garou]

Bump for the edit.

 

[knightc2]

I have not tried that yet. I will try to do that when I get home. If you have any more ideas, please let me know.

Thanks.

 

[Green Man]

Go into disk management like werk said, and asign the drive a letter. Just right click on the hard drive and you'll see the option.

 

[knightc2]

OK, I went into disk management and the option to assign a drive letter is grayed out. It shows my drive as having no drive letter and the status is healthy (active) and it does recognize the correct size. It is also listed properly as being a slave drive. The only option available when I right click is to delete partition. Any ideas?

 

[knightc2]

Bump for new info

 

[WarCon]

Try putting it on a different IDE channel as master to see if you can see the data on it. Maybe try making it a non-active partition if it will let you.

I am guessing you have the jumpers set to master and slave respectively. Have you tried them both on CS and let the ATA100 decide who is master and who is slave?

Just some thoughts.

 

[loup garou]

Do you mind upgrading to a dynamic disk instead of a basic disk? If not, in the bottom pane of the disk manager, can you right click on the gray area where it says Disk 0 or Disk 1 for the drive and see if you can upgrade it to a dynamic disk?

 

[knightc2]

I tried the drive as Master and Slave at first, but ran into problems so they are on Cable select now. If I remember correctly I did remove my cd-rom drives and I put the other drive on the secondary IDE controller by itself. Still no luck. I may try that again though.

As for the dynamic disk thing, I don't think it even gave me the option to do so at least on disk 1 (the drive in question). I will check again tonight. What exactly is a dynamic disk anyway?

 

[loup garou]

Dynamic disks are usable only on win2k and XPPro systems (and I imagine on Server 2k3). They use volumes instead of partitions and cannot be read by other OSs. As for the pros and cons, I honestly don't know much about them except that my data drives on a Win2k Server machine are dynamic disks that were converted from a basic disk (that also couldn't be assigned a drive letter when I added it) and they are working fine. Try a search on the MS KB to learn more about them.

 

[lookin4dlz]

I've had this problem when I set up a new hard drive & they were both seen as the primary boot drive. Fixed it using fdisk.

 

[knightc2]

UPDATE: For those that are interested, I have found a solution and what was causing the problem. After losing more of my hair and searchig for several days, I came across a thread on a message board that talked about the same problem and an issue with Roxio's Go Back. (I had Go Back installed from Norton System Works Pro 2002) Well, it turns out that any XP (maybe others, I'm not sure) drive that has Go Back 3.0 installed will cause Win XP problems when trying to see the drive contents unless you boot from the drive itself. Since I was using a different system, I couldn't boot from the drive. Go Back must install something funky on the drive that prevents it from being used as anything other than the boot drive. Anyway, to solve this problem I had to setup my old system and boot from the drive in question. Then uninstall Go Back and reboot again. Then I was able to put the drive in my new system and viola, drive and it's contents are recognized. A real pain in the a$$, but I am happy that everything is working and my data is safe. Thanks for everyone's help.

 

[loup garou]

Originally posted by: knightc2
UPDATE: For those that are interested, I have found a solution and what was causing the problem. After losing more of my hair and searchig for several days, I came across a thread on a message board that talked about the same problem and an issue with Roxio's Go Back. (I had Go Back installed from Norton System Works Pro 2002) Well, it turns out that any XP (maybe others, I'm not sure) drive that has Go Back 3.0 installed will cause Win XP problems when trying to see the drive contents unless you boot from the drive itself. Since I was using a different system, I couldn't boot from the drive. Go Back must install something funky on the drive that prevents it from being used as anything other than the boot drive. Anyway, to solve this problem I had to setup my old system and boot from the drive in question. Then uninstall Go Back and reboot again. Then I was able to put the drive in my new system and viola, drive and it's contents are recognized. A real pain in the a$$, but I am happy that everything is working and my data is safe. Thanks for everyone's help.

Geez, I just had to do the same thing with a client's computer too (except he couldn't update from XP Home to XP Pro)! Sorry I didn't think of it earlier and glad to hear you worked it out.