Old hard drive into new PC

[gazzer]

I have an old hard drive, it was a secondary hard drive in the old PC,
that has media on it that I do not want to loose unless absolutrly
necessary. I have installed it with the jumper set to 'slave' and
hooked up the cables to both drives, end connector to the secondary
drive, but windows will not recognise the 'new' drive.
What am I doing wrong?? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

THX
Gaz

 

[D.Currie]

I have an old hard drive, it was a secondary hard drive in the old PC,
that has media on it that I do not want to loose unless absolutrly
necessary. I have installed it with the jumper set to 'slave' and
hooked up the cables to both drives, end connector to the secondary
drive, but windows will not recognise the 'new' drive.
What am I doing wrong?? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

THX
Gaz

Is the jumper on the primary drive set correctly?

 

[Ron Martell]

I have an old hard drive, it was a secondary hard drive in the old PC,
that has media on it that I do not want to loose unless absolutrly
necessary. I have installed it with the jumper set to 'slave' and
hooked up the cables to both drives, end connector to the secondary
drive, but windows will not recognise the 'new' drive.
What am I doing wrong?? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

THX
Gaz

Sometimes old and new hard drives have problems working together when
connected as Master and Slave on the same IDE channel.

Try connecting the drive, at least temporarily, as the master drive on
the secondary IDE channel. Temporarily unplug anything that is
already connected to the secondary IDE, such as CD drives.

That should allow your Windows to see the hard drive and to use it.

If it still does not work go into your computer's BIOS setup and use
the "auto detect hard drives" option and see if both hard drives are
actually being detected by the computer's BIOS. If not then you have
a hardware issue with the drive itself.

Good luck

Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca

In memory of a dear friend Alex Nichol MVP
http://aumha.org/alex.htm

 

[Guest]

You didn't mention what operating system your old hard drive was used with.
Could be a different file system (ie FAT vs NTSC)

 

[D.Currie]

That isn't going to matter as long as it's a file system XP can read. So
pretty much any Windows format is fine; if it's a Mac drive it might be an
issue, but he said it was from his old PC...

 

[gazzer]

Thanks for all your help!! I did not know to change the jumper on the
master disc. It works now but I did have to format the drive which
meant loosing all my songs and photos. (((

 

[Timothy Daniels]

[........] It works now but I did have to format the drive which
meant loosing all my songs and photos. (((

Ummm.... , I hope it wasn't due to the old files having been
in FAT32 format instead of NTFS. These might have helped:

How to Convert FAT Disks to NTFS
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/winxppro/maintain/convertfat.mspx

Convert FAT to NTFS
http://www.ntfs.com/quest3.htm

CONVERTING FAT32 to NTFS in Windows XP
http://aumha.org/win5/a/ntfscvt.php


*TimDaniels*

 

[Shenan Stanley]

Thanks for all your help!! I did not know to change the jumper on the
master disc. It works now but I did have to format the drive which
meant loosing all my songs and photos. (((

Why did you *have* to format?
If it was formatted as FAT32/NTFS before - you should have been able to
install it as a SLAVE drive and read the data off of it with no problem
(since you wanted it as a secondary drive in the new system I assume?)

 

[D.Currie]

Xp can read Fat 32 just fine. There's no reason to need to convert, but in
this case I guess it's too late.

[........] It works now but I did have to format the drive which
meant loosing all my songs and photos. (((

Ummm.... , I hope it wasn't due to the old files having been
in FAT32 format instead of NTFS. These might have helped:

How to Convert FAT Disks to NTFS
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/winxppro/maintain/convertfat.mspx

Convert FAT to NTFS
http://www.ntfs.com/quest3.htm

CONVERTING FAT32 to NTFS in Windows XP
http://aumha.org/win5/a/ntfscvt.php


*TimDaniels*