Adding a Second SATA Drive with Data on it

[RustyJones]

Help!! I have installed a Seagate 250GB SATA drive loaded Windows XP on a ASUS K8V SE Delux motherboard. This set up is up and working fine.

I now need to add a second 160 GB MAXTOR SATA drive that has important data files on it. I would appreciate any advice on if a second drive can be installed without destroying the existing data. I have plugged in SATA data and power cables n rebooted the pc, the drive doesnt show up in My Computer, but shows as active in the windows diskmgmt.msc. utility. Any advice would be much appreciated.

 

[PCcashCow]

In Disk MGT how is the drive labled? Online? Dynamic? Also, was your second drive on a ntfs fileing system?

 

[RustyJones]

In Disk Management, the drive is labeled Disk1 and shows as 152.66GB NTFS, Healthy (Active).

In the lower graphical panel the new disk installed is shown as Disk 0 (C 232.88GB NTFS Healthy (system) all on a white background. When I right click I have

Below that the disc I am trying to access is shown as Disk 1 152.66GB Healthy (active) all on a white backgound. It has no drive letter assigned to it.

When I open 'My Computer' only the C drive is shown!

Any help would be much appreciated.

 

[RustyJones]

In Disk Management, the drive is labeled Disk1 and shows as 152.66GB NTFS, Healthy (Active).

In the lower graphical panel the new disk installed is shown as Disk 0 (C 232.88GB NTFS Healthy (system) all on a white background.

Below that the disc I am trying to access is shown as Disk 1 152.66GB Healthy (active) all on a white backgound. It has no drive letter assigned to it. When I right click I only have options to delete partition!

When I open 'My Computer' only the C drive is shown!

Any help would be much appreciated.

 

[apache_lives]

in disk management right click on the drive (the left bar) and select activate (i think it was activate, or initialise), if thats not available, right click on the patition information on the right and select change (or assign) drive letters and tell it a new drive letter to use incase there isnt one assigned for the drive.

 

[RustyJones]

The option I have when right clicking is convert to dynamic disk?

I then receive a warning that I will not be able to start any installed operating stystems from any volume on the disk. ......Which I presume is fine as I only want to read the file content!

When I continue, I get a further warning, File systems on any of the disks to be converted will be dismounted. Do I wish to continue this operation?

I have no idea what this means....I only need to read the files on the disk is it ok to continue?

 

[PCcashCow]

I think you'll be ok as it my be reffering to fatxx to ntfs. You should be ok, but to be sure wait for another 'old sage' to verify.

 

[RustyJones]

I hit the button and it was indeed ok.

I was able to label the SATA drive and can read it just fine. Thanks for your advice very helpful. I'm sure others will wish to do the same!!