adding second hard drive after original crashed

[Guest]

I know little concerning computer hard drives, motherboards, etc.

I recently got a blue screen that said "unmountable boot volume" and some
other stuff. I was told that my hard drive was toast, but I might be able to
recover some data (pictures mainly) off of it if I got another hard drive and
installed it on my computer. I am in the process of doing so, but want to
make sure I am not ruining the original hard drive data as I go.

I disabled the original hard drive in setup during the boot process and
installed the new hard drive, partitioned it, and now am trying to install
windows xp on it. Do I need to do this? Will this erase everything off of
the original hard drive? Will this cause a problem when I go back and enable
the original hard drive, having two sets of windows on my computer? Please
let me know ASAP. Thanks in advance.

 

[DatabaseBen]

you can hook the old harddrive later on and don't need it for your new
installation.

after you complete the installation and windows works fine. you can then
powerdown your pc and hook the old harddrive up to the other available
connector on that flat ribbon cable. When you power up the pc, it should
automatically recognize this second hard drive. But if it doesn;t simply go
into your cmos/bios and use the options to help it locate all your
harddrives.

Afterwards, when you get back into windows, you should be able to see some
files and folder of the old harddrive in you file explorer.... I think you
can take it from there....

 

[Guest]

I already have the original hard drive plugged into the motherboard (SATA
hard drives)... should I unplug this first, before proceeding with the
windows installation?

Also, when formatting the partition using the NTFS file system, what is the
difference between the "quick" option and the regular option?

 

[AZGLI]

Usually in this situation, it is best to have an experienced person do
the install. On your own, can do it, but the following steps might make
it easier.

1. Remove the old drive. Unplug it from all the cables, you can leave
it mounted into the case, but unplug everything from the drive.

2. Install the new drive using the cables from the old drive. Mount it
into the case.

3. Turn on the computer and put the Windows XP CD in the drve

4. Boot from CD when prompted (if needed )

5. You should be able to select the defaults through the setup process.
By removing your old hard drive, you have removed the possibility of
damage to the existing data.

6. Once the XP install has completed, turn off the computer and plug in
the old drive as a secondary hard drive.

7. Turn the computer back on and boot into Windows.

You should be able to see the secondary drive, if it is still
mountable. An alternative is to take the old drive to an experienced,
reputable comptuer repair shop and see if they can salvage anything
from the drive. Linux operating systems can usually see data that
Windows cannot.

Hope this helps!

 

[DL]

Unplug origonal old failed drive first
Plug in new drive, install win and update
Power down, connect old drive
If it wont start with old drive connected then call the proffessionals