Adding 2nd hard drive to XP Pro

[Whitemtntn]

Hi--
I am trying to add a 2nd hard drive to XP Pro just to read and copy existing data from. The 2nd drive is a Primary partition with FAT32-- it came from a separate Windows 98 machine.

Disk Management in XP sees the drive, but does not give me the option to assign a drive letter-- i cannot access the data. The problem I assume is that there are 2 Primary partitions?
They are both IDE drives setup as Master and Slave on the same IDE interface.
How can I see this data in XP? Thanks...

-Whitemtntn

 

[kiddpete]

It is likely that the problem is that the drive was formatted in Win 98 (as a boot drive?). XP probably wants the drive repartitioned, and then reformatted before it will access it. XP probably won't get the data off of it. If you want data, you may need something like getdataback.

 

[Whitemtntn]

Yes-- it was definitely the boot drive for Win98, partitioned and formatted by Win98.

XP really can't read this? I've done this before (added a primary hard drive as a 2nd drive to retrieve data), and had no problem. I guess i've never added an older Win98 primary hard drive to an XP machine.
Any other ideas besides shelling out $69 for getdataback?
thanks.......
-Whitemtntn

 

[sostek]

You could always download Knoppix, boot the drive in an extra machine and transfer the files to and SMB share on the XP box.

Yes it's a kludge but it works and it's free.

 

[DTSMAN]

You are missing something. We do this all the time also. When we do an upgrade to XP for a customer we build a new hard drive and then slave in the old 98 and copy their files over. Something may be wrong with the drive setup or something. Maybe you could copy all the files off the 98 drive through DOS and then format that drive.

Bo

Kentucky phone support-
"Mash the Kentrol key and hit scape."

 

[linney]

There are reports similar to this where the problem turned out to be recovery type software that was installed on the hard drive in the old operating system, things like "Go Back" were mentioned. The solution was to return the drive to the old system and remove that type of software.

 

[Whitemtntn]

linney-- it's possible that you nailed it-- this hard drive came from a Gateway PC that was using the Gateway GoBack software.

 

[thedon57]

Hi when i did what you have done, i created a shortcut on the desktop, transfered my file over to the other drive(master) and as a backup also burnt them to cd/r. Formated the slave then put the files back, xp then assigned a letter to it.

Sorry if that is not what you want.

See my own website at

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Selfbuilt_conputer,

backed up by all updates, and sercurities.

 

[kiddpete]

This may be done regularly by others, but I recently moved a healthy drive from its boot position and installed Win XP Pro on a new drive. I did that because I had reinstalled XP on the original drive in error. The install had reformatted the drive before reinstalling XP, and had wiped out a lot of data. The new install would not read the old boot drive, and, every time I clicked on it, it offered to reformat the drive. I wanted to avoid this because I was using getbackdata to recover files from it.

The drive is not, however, a slave on the same IDE cable used by the boot drive. It is attached to a seperate Promise controller. It had no 'go back' or other software on it. Since I have been swapping drives around regularly in the last few months, I was surprised. I figured it was because XP was seeing two boot drives. It was, however, not an issue for me. Once I recovered all the files I thought I could recover, I reformatted it and moved on. After that, it has functioned fine.