Windows 8 not assigning a drive letter to an old XP formatted HDD

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bhdavis1

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Dec 4, 2007
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I've built a new desktop Windows 8 PC with the following core components:


MB GIGABYTE|GA-Z77X-UD4H Z77 1155 R
PSU ANTEC| EA-380D GREEN RT
CPU INTEL|CORE I5 3570K 3.4G 6M R
SSD 180G|INTEL SSDSC2CW180A3K5 R
MEM 4Gx2|G.SKILL F3-12800CL9D-8GBXL
MICROSOFT WINDOWS 8 64-BIT

The machine is up and running nicely. Actually the fastest and easiest build I've ever done. Not quite sure why........... I sorted out Windows 8 on my new laptop and with CLASSIC SHELL installed I'm pretty happy with the operating system.

Now it's time to move the DATA hard disk drive from my old Windows XP Home desktop unit over into the new machine. It's a WD 160 GB drive with about 38 GB of files so I see no reason not to just put it in the new machine.

Problem is that when I connect it to the new machine via SATA the BIOS and Windows DRIVE MANAGEMENT see the HDD but almost all options for assigning a drive letter are grayed out. I believe the only right click option active in the DISK MANAGEMENT window is DELETE VOLUME.

Is this an issue of Windows 8 not being able to read an XP formatted drive? Or do you think there will be some way I'll be able to get this hard drive recognized by Windows 8. There are alternatives of course like copying the old drive to a new blank Windows 8 formatted drive by going through the network.

Thanks for you help.
BH
 
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bhdavis1

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Dec 4, 2007
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I've tried both the program drive and the data drives and neither one reads through the internal SATA ports.

I have just tried connecting another 16GB XP formatted SSD drive through a USB / SATA adapter connector and that read fine in the Windows 8 machine. That would probably mean this isn't necessarily a Windows problem.

There are of course other ways to transfer the data. I've done some through my network, some via thumb drives and some via that SSD 16 GB drive I connected through the USB port.

The next thing to try (more out of curiosity than necessity since most of the files are now already transferred) will be the 160GB WD drive through the USB port with the SATA / USB adapter. I think I've decided not to use this data drive internally after all but rather to use another SSD for data.

Thanks,
BH
 
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