Trying to move a drive from one XP comp to another

[Guest]

Hey:
I recently had a computer crash and was able to move the non boot drive
to another computer. The BIOS recognizes the drive. (They're identical WD
800BB drives on the newer comptuer.) WINDOWS will not recognize the slave
drive though.
Short of reformatting the drive, which i'd rather not do because I have
important info on it, how can I get Win XP Home to start using the drive.
(It shows up on Device Manager too, not in Explorer...
HELP!

 

[Guest]

The jumpers may not be set properly? Did you actually ID the pin settings or
just assume?

j;-)

 

[Guest]

Jaymon:
I DID ID the drives and change all of the jumpers to reflect
master/slave. I moved the CD Rom to the Secondary Master as well.

 

[Anna]

Jaymon:
I DID ID the drives and change all of the jumpers to reflect
master/slave. I moved the CD Rom to the Secondary Master as well.

Lexstan:
Did you access Disk Management to see if the drive is listed and there's an
option to assign a drive letter to that drive?
Anna

 

[Guest]

I did go to Disk Management and it did not list the drive as recognizable.
The only way I can get it to recognize would be to reformat it and I don't
want to do that...

 

[Anna]

I did go to Disk Management and it did not list the drive as recognizable.
The only way I can get it to recognize would be to reformat it and I don't
want to do that...

Lexstan:
You mentioned both drives are Western Digital. You're *absolutely* certain
that your Primary Master is jumpered for Dual (Master with Slave present)
and *not* for Single?

And you're *absolutely* certain that your Primary Slave (it *is* connected
as a slave to the master, yes?) is jumpered as Slave?

And you're *absolutely* certain your IDE cable connections to the
motherboard's IDE connectors and the drives' connectors are securely
fastened? Do you have another IDE cable available to replace the present one
just in case there's something amiss with the cable?

Assuming all the above is OK, any possibility that the problem drive is
defective? (The fact that it's recognized in the BIOS is not an absolute
certainty the contents of the drive are available for data access). Have you
run WD's diagnostic on it?
Anna

 

[Guest]

I've done all of that and still nothing. It shows up in WD's diagnostic
program as a physical drive but not a logical drive (or is that backward?) I
put the drive in the old computer just to see if it would see it there and it
does see it.
hmmmmm...

 

[Anna]

I've done all of that and still nothing. It shows up in WD's diagnostic
program as a physical drive but not a logical drive (or is that backward?)
I
put the drive in the old computer just to see if it would see it there and
it
does see it.
hmmmmm...

Lexstan:
I don't understand your comment about the WD diagnostic program reporting
that the drive is "a physical drive but not a logical drive" or vice versa.
Is there some significance here? But you did run the WD diagnostic test and
it checked out OK, right?

So there's no problem accessing the drive when it's installed in the "old
computer"? I take it that's the original computer from whence this drive
came, yes? Anyway, now that you can access its data, can't you now copy
whatever data you need to some removable media, CD, jump drive, etc.? And
after doing so, reformat the drive, install it in your new computer and go
on from there?

I honestly don't know what else to suggest at this point.
Anna

 

[Guest]

Anna:
That's what I was about to do yesterday. However, in the middle of all
of this, I had a mirror drive die on a REALLY important computer and have to
attend to getting a new drive and setting that back up first...
Thanks for taking the time to help me. I appreciate it.

 

[Guest]

Lex,

You might try to get fdisk.exe on a boot disk and see if you can ID the disk
or see at least if it is setup correctly for large disk access FAT32 and or
if the partitions are setup correctly, if they are not then XP may be
temperamental. Disk managers that come with HD's or at least the ones that I
own, WD and Seagate have allowed too much or not enough space for partitions
to breath. If you don't have a little extra buffer space on the drive it can
foul up Windows not being able to see the drive properly or not at all. Using
fdisk or XP's disk manager to do the calculating automatically allows the
proper amount/ratio of the disk space w/buffer for partitions.