Recovering a hard drive from a dead machine

  • Thread starter Thread starter M. David Johnson
  • Start date Start date
M

M. David Johnson

We have an old Dell GX115 that won't start (bad power
button) so I took the HDD out and put it into a GX240
running W2K Pro (as a second HDD).

I'm not sure what the GX115 was running - it could have
been W98, W2K Pro, or WinXP Pro (Yes, I know, but I'm
brand new and haven't had time to do a proper inventory
yet - my predecessor wasn't very good about paperwork).

Both drives in the GX240 are now jumpered for Cable
Select. The GX240 BIOS finds the drive and the W2K Pro
Control Panel's "System" finds it and says it is working
properly. But W2K Pro does not assign a drive letter to it
and I cannot access its data. Uninstalling and
reinstalling the HDD from the Control Panel had no
effect.
 
Hi M. David,

You can use Disk Management (diskmgmt.msc) "To assign, change, or remove a drive
letter". For more information, search Disk Management Help
(C:\WINNT\Help\diskmgmt.chm) for the words in double-quotes.

--
Carrie Garth, Microsoft MVP for Windows 2000
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- c x g

: "M. David Johnson" <david_johnson AT irb DOT state DOT il DOTus>
: Wrote in message : Sent: Wednesday, August 20, 2003 04:19 PM
: We have an old Dell GX115 that won't start (bad power
: button) so I took the HDD out and put it into a GX240
: running W2K Pro (as a second HDD).
:
: I'm not sure what the GX115 was running - it could have
: been W98, W2K Pro, or WinXP Pro (Yes, I know, but I'm
: brand new and haven't had time to do a proper inventory
: yet - my predecessor wasn't very good about paperwork).
:
: Both drives in the GX240 are now jumpered for Cable
: Select. The GX240 BIOS finds the drive and the W2K Pro
: Control Panel's "System" finds it and says it is working
: properly. But W2K Pro does not assign a drive letter to it
: and I cannot access its data. Uninstalling and
: reinstalling the HDD from the Control Panel had no
: effect.
 
Highly probable that you are running NTFS5 with your GX240. Put the other
drive in and - if it is NTFS4 it will be upgraded to NTFS5. FAT16/32 drives
are also marked and - you guessed it - become unreadable.

You need to put the drive into a system running Windows 98 and try and
repair it.
 
Nonsense.

| Highly probable that you are running NTFS5 with your GX240. Put the other
| drive in and - if it is NTFS4 it will be upgraded to NTFS5. FAT16/32 drives
| are also marked and - you guessed it - become unreadable.
|
| You need to put the drive into a system running Windows 98 and try and
| repair it.
 
you should see the drive under disk management. if you do not see any volumes
you need to recreate the partition table. if there are corrupt volumes you
need data recovery software.
|
| : "M. David Johnson" <david_johnson AT irb DOT state DOT il DOTus>
| : Wrote in message | : Sent: Wednesday, August 20, 2003 04:19 PM
| : We have an old Dell GX115 that won't start (bad power
| : button) so I took the HDD out and put it into a GX240
| : running W2K Pro (as a second HDD).
| :
| : I'm not sure what the GX115 was running - it could have
| : been W98, W2K Pro, or WinXP Pro (Yes, I know, but I'm
| : brand new and haven't had time to do a proper inventory
| : yet - my predecessor wasn't very good about paperwork).
| :
| : Both drives in the GX240 are now jumpered for Cable
| : Select. The GX240 BIOS finds the drive and the W2K Pro
| : Control Panel's "System" finds it and says it is working
| : properly. But W2K Pro does not assign a drive letter to it
| : and I cannot access its data. Uninstalling and
| : reinstalling the HDD from the Control Panel had no
| : effect.
|
 
Try the "Add New Hardware" wizard in the Control Panel.
If may find the hard drive, and assign a new drive letter
for it. I had the same problem (BIOS could see it, but
Windows couldn't) with a WinME machine locating a SANDISK
digital camera input device, and this worked for that. No
guarantees.

Also, ensure you have the jumper pins on the hard drives
set properly. Sometimes, the Cable Select doesn't work
(depends on the hard drive manufacturer). If you have
different manufacturers, you have more problems in this
regard than with the same manufacturer.

Good luck.
 
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