Installing a used hard drive without formatting

  • Thread starter Thread starter neca
  • Start date Start date
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neca

I took a 60 GB western digital hard drive out my old PC. It was a
slave there. I simply want to put it into a new PC as a slave as well,
but I transferred all of my data from the old PC on that drive, and so
I do not want to format it. I want to use that data. Can I do this?
When I hook it up, start-up seems to recognize it (saying a slave is in
place), but it does not show up anywhere in windows. Any help you can
offer would be much appreciated.
 
neca said:
I took a 60 GB western digital hard drive out my old PC. It was a
slave there. I simply want to put it into a new PC as a slave as well,
but I transferred all of my data from the old PC on that drive, and so
I do not want to format it. I want to use that data. Can I do this?
When I hook it up, start-up seems to recognize it (saying a slave is in
place), but it does not show up anywhere in windows. Any help you can
offer would be much appreciated.
Click to expand...

Have you tried to assign a drive letter in Disk Management?

Start > Settings > Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer
Management > Disk Management

If the drive shows (you may need to scroll down) right click each
partition on the drive and give each a unique drive letters.

John
 
neca said:
I took a 60 GB western digital hard drive out my old PC. It was a
slave there. I simply want to put it into a new PC as a slave as well,
but I transferred all of my data from the old PC on that drive, and so
I do not want to format it. I want to use that data. Can I do this?
When I hook it up, start-up seems to recognize it (saying a slave is in
place), but it does not show up anywhere in windows. Any help you can
offer would be much appreciated.
Click to expand...

If your old PC ran a Windows operating system, and if the old
disk had FAT/FAT32 or NTFS partitions then the new PC will
recognise those partitions. However, there are a couple of traps:

- Most but not all PCs select the correct drive geometry in
the BIOS. You could try a different geometry for the old drive,
e.g. "Large" or "LBA".
- If you used a proprietary disk compression scheme on your old
PC then you won't be able to read the disk on the new PC.

By the way, what do you see under the Storage Manager?
Click Start / Run, then type diskmgmt.msc {OK}.

If you can't get this to work, connect the two PCs with a
cross-over network cable and transfer your data via this
mini-network.
 
The new drive does not show up under the disk management dialogs. That
is a neat window though, I have never seen that. Anyway, I think I
know the problem: I was plugging the drive into an extra space on the
cable (big flat data cable, I don't know what it is called) that was
running up to my two disc drives (DVD, DVD-R). There is a seperate
cable going from the board to my original hard drive but there are no
extra slots on that one. Is the problem? I need to link up my hard
drives together? And if so can I buy another cable at a store that has
more slots. I have not tried the drive geometry thing yet. Where
would I access that? Thank you both for your responses.
 
neca said:
The new drive does not show up under the disk management dialogs. That
is a neat window though, I have never seen that. Anyway, I think I
know the problem: I was plugging the drive into an extra space on the
cable (big flat data cable, I don't know what it is called) that was
running up to my two disc drives (DVD, DVD-R). There is a seperate
cable going from the board to my original hard drive but there are no
extra slots on that one. Is the problem? I need to link up my hard
drives together? And if so can I buy another cable at a store that has
more slots. I have not tried the drive geometry thing yet. Where
would I access that? Thank you both for your responses.
Click to expand...

Your reports are slightly contradictory. In your first post you said
that your BIOS detects the old drive whereas you now say that
the Storage Manager does not detect it. AFAIK, all drives detected
by the BIOS are also seen by the Storage Manager.

Your motherboard has two IDE controllers, each with its IDE
socket for ribbon cables. Each of these cables can support one master
and one slave disk. If you have a DVD and a DVD-R drive on
the secondary IDE cable then you must connect your old disk
as a slave disk on the primary IDE cable. You can buy one with
three connectors at any computer store. Ask them at the same
time to show you how to set your old disk as a slave rather than
a master disk.

You can set the drive geometry in the BIOS setup screen.
 
Success! I switched my IDE cables (so that my hard drive one had an
extra slot) and the new slave drive came up fine! I am very happy.
Thanks the help.
 
Pegasus (MVP) said:
Your reports are slightly contradictory. In your first post you said
that your BIOS detects the old drive whereas you now say that
the Storage Manager does not detect it. AFAIK, all drives detected
by the BIOS are also seen by the Storage Manager.

Your motherboard has two IDE controllers, each with its IDE
socket for ribbon cables. Each of these cables can support one master
and one slave disk. If you have a DVD and a DVD-R drive on
the secondary IDE cable then you must connect your old disk
as a slave disk on the primary IDE cable. You can buy one with
three connectors at any computer store. Ask them at the same
time to show you how to set your old disk as a slave rather than
a master disk.

You can set the drive geometry in the BIOS setup screen.
Click to expand...


Pegasus:
Actually it's entirely possible that the BIOS will recognize an installed HD
but the OS will not for data access purposes. We come across this situation
with some degree of frequency. The problem, as I think happened in the OP's
situation, is nearly always (excepting for a dying drive) that the drive has
not been connected/configured properly, e.g., wrong jumper setting,
incorrectly seated IDE data cable, defective cable, and the like. Also
problems can occur with the connectors themselves on the motherboard's IDE
channel or the HD. Not serious enough for the BIOS *not* to detect the
existence of a HD, but serious enough that the OS doesn't "see" the drive in
Disk Management (I think that's what you were referring to when you
mentioned "Storage Manager", yes?). Frankly, the average user has to be
"weaned away" from the notion that just because the drive is detected in the
BIOS, they're "home free" for data access purposes involving that drive.

Your suggestion to the OP that he or she reconfigure the drive's connections
along the lines you described is, I think, right on the mark.
Anna
 
Anna said:
Pegasus:
Actually it's entirely possible that the BIOS will recognize an installed HD
but the OS will not for data access purposes. We come across this situation
with some degree of frequency. The problem, as I think happened in the OP's
situation, is nearly always (excepting for a dying drive) that the drive has
not been connected/configured properly, e.g., wrong jumper setting,
incorrectly seated IDE data cable, defective cable, and the like. Also
problems can occur with the connectors themselves on the motherboard's IDE
channel or the HD. Not serious enough for the BIOS *not* to detect the
existence of a HD, but serious enough that the OS doesn't "see" the drive in
Disk Management (I think that's what you were referring to when you
mentioned "Storage Manager", yes?). Frankly, the average user has to be
"weaned away" from the notion that just because the drive is detected in the
BIOS, they're "home free" for data access purposes involving that drive.

Your suggestion to the OP that he or she reconfigure the drive's connections
along the lines you described is, I think, right on the mark.
Anna
Click to expand...

Thanks for the clarification - much appreciated!
 
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