New PC wont find my old HDD 1

[rexxxy]

Hi guys,

Please help!! Last night my Dad bought a new computer. A HP Pavillion P4. I installed his old HDD from his old HP Pavillion (Athlon) and jumpered it as slave, also jumpered his PC's new drive as Master. They are both on the same IDE channel. I also installed his old CD/RW drive in as a slave off his new DVD R/W drive (Master).

Primary on IDE 1 - Samsung 120GB HDD
Secondary on IDE 1 - Seagate 30GB HDD
Primary on IDE 2 - HP DVD/RW
Secondary on IDE 2 - TEAC CD/RW

Now in the BIOS I can see all the drives and all are being detected correctly. And I can hear both HDD's spin up.

He is running Windows XP Home (SP1). This version is that which was pre-installed and shipped with the computer.

Problem is that I cannot see the second HDD within Windows explorer. Under Device manager I see it as being there. And within computer administration - Disk Managment I see the drive as being there but i has a Yellow asterix on it. If I right click on it I get the option to convert the disk to Basic (but in doing so I lose all the data). The second CD/RW drive that I installed works fine.

I have been to the Seagate web site and downloaded the disk managment tools but all they want to do it repartition and format the drive. I just cant get to the data.

The drive which I am trying to access was a bootable drive and was loaded with Windows XP professional.

Can anyone help me here please! I spent my whole Friday night pulling my hair out over this one!

Thanks in advance!

 

[azpctech01]

what file system is on the old disk? fat 32 or 16?
if you by any chance are running NTFS on the XP side you may not see the old drive

 

[rexxxy]

So what you are saying is that if the Primary drive is running say FAT32, and the Secondary drive (which I cant see) is running NTFS then I would be unable to view the contents of the NTFS drive? Can you or anyone confirm / deny this?

Thanks for the suggestion. Im going back to my dads place tomorrow and hopefully armed with some knowledge from you guys! I might just be able to get it going!

 

[bcastner]

Do not set the hard disk drive to Master/Slave.
Set both drives to Cable Select.

Make sure you use the right end of the IDE cable. The farthest end (black) is the Master drive, the middle connector (grey) is the slave drive.

 

[bcastner]

You did not, by any chance, have GoBack installed on the old computer setup did you?

If so,

1. Reconfigure old drive as Master
2. Boot from it, remove GoBack
3. Exit
4. Reconfigure drives
5. Resetart new configuratioin

You should now see the old drive.

 

[rexxxy]

Hey bcastner - Can you please explain why I would setup the drives as cable select? How would that help me to be able to get tot the drive within Windows XP?

 

[bcastner]

Because that is the way HP shipped the drive in the new computer.

 

[rexxxy]

Fair enough. Hopefully I get a chance tonight to play with the computer and work out if the disk will by default be FAT32.

 

[bcastner]

Make certain that in Disk Management you ask for a "rescan" of the disks. I believe it is under the Tab marked Action.

 

[rexxxy]

ok I have had a look at the computer and found the C partition to be NTFS. I still cannot see the data on the 2nd HDD. Under disk managment the following is listed

Disk 0
Basic
111.0 GB
OnLine

Disk 1
Dynamic

Foreign

Disk 0 has 2 partitions, they are C: 106.63GB (NTFS) and D:5.17GB (FAT32)

Does anyone have any thoughts?

 

[wolluf]

The old disk is configured as a dynamic, not a basic disk (as I've never used dynamic disks I don't know why this would cause a problem - perhaps all disks in machine have to be dynamic? -

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/tr...l/windows2000serv/deploy/confeat/configdy.asp

might be of use - but you probably need someone with dynamic disk experience (I know comtech17 uses them..)

 

[edfair]

How about temporarily using the old drive only in the new machine. If it boots that way it indicates that there is something affecting it that the new drive doesn't have.

The word dynamic is a possible indicator. If it was a drive that used a dynamic drive overlay to increase available space (BIOS limitation override) it wouldn't be seen by the new operating system until the DDO software was loaded on the new system.
If this is the case, you should have the software with the old system and should be able to make a bootable floppy that can see the drive to transfer files.
And your end result should be to fdisk and format to have it a standard filesystem.

Ed Fair
Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply. Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.

 

[ceh4702]

It might be nice if you just networked the computers and copied over the network.

In the past when I stuck a hard drive in a XP machine it just says found new hardware and I can read it. The problem might be that the old HD had Win2k on it. XP has a file transfer wizard, but I have never used it. It is designed to copy files from the old computer to the new computer. Win2k was difficult when it came to security.

XP can see Win98 hard drives normally.

I strongly recommend going to the Winxp win98 or win2k forums. I think there is one for each operating system you may have. They lumped the xp home and xp professional into xp professional.

XP has some options for doing a repair of an operating system, and a wizard to move files from one comptuer to the next over a network. You may want to check those out.

If you have some special software to install and copy a hard drive from one hard drive to the next that might be helpful. However, you may not be able to mix 2 different file systems, even between 2 different versions of NTFS. XP USES NTFS for a file system. The install disk of XP May be able to set that hard drive up, but you could lose your data?

If you do not like my post feel free to point out your opinion or my errors.

 

[rexxxy]

Both HDD's are installed with WIndows XP. However I will take the above advice and seek a Windows XP topic. I believe the whole BASIC and DYNAMIC disk is the reason behind the problem. Just need some guidance on how to resolve this one. I will post the solution back if I ever find one! My father is getting quite anxious to get at some of his old documents!!

 

[rexxxy]

The problem is caused by the fact that Windows XP Home Edition does not support dynamic disks. The Slave drive being dynamic, I cant get the data.

Now to find a piece of software which will allow me to read the drive.

 

[madonnac]

if the original machine created the dynamic disk, you have the software right there!

Suggestion - put 30Gb and 120Gb into old machine, and boot from 30Gb

Rescue Data from 30Gb onto 120Gb

Return disks to new machine in desired configuration

format 30Gb, and start fresh

 

[rexxxy]

Thanks for the tip Madonnac, but the problem is that the old machines motherboard died on me which was the reason for the upgrade in the first place. I am going to find some software to read the Dynamic disk.

 

[madonnac]

you will need windows 2000 or XP pro

Have you got the restore disks that came with the old machine? maybe you could use those to get the 30Gb working in the new machine

BTW, this is legal, as long as you own both machines - as long as you are using the software on only one machine at a time

If you sell or dispose of the old machine, the licence becomes invalid, and you no longer have any rights to use the software

 

[canobe]

what mean by basic and dynamic disk? and what is the different and used?