Swopping Hard drive from old pc to new and back - problems!

[powerflower]

Hi all, Just built myself a new pc, and found the easiest way to get data from my old pc to new, was to use my IDE port and connect my IDE disk drive from my old pc, then just copy data files across. In order to make things clearer for myself I renamed the old drive "old drive" rather than continue to use the name it had when it appeared on my new pc under the explorer tree, [I dont remember what it was called before hand - it may just have been labelled "local drive"] the drive letter was h: this remained unchanged.

Ok so now i want to put my "old drive" into my old computor, and my old computor wont boot up! it doesnt recognise the "old drive" even though this is the original drive for the old computor, im guessing that my renaming it from "local drive" h: to "old drive" h: must have somehow changed something in its settings.

How can i get this drive to work again in my old pc, without formatting it and re-installing - as i still have some data i want to get hold of, like email addresses from MS Office outlook 2003, etc. - and i cant access them when its installed in my new pc. Also this old disk has programmes on that are downloads that i have paid for and dont want to loose access to [via the old pc that is].

Would really appreciate your help.

Cheers
Ade.

 

[pkellmey]

I am only guessing at your OS, but it sounds like you have some newer flavor of windows (2000,XP,2003). When it was placed in the other PC, there is a tag that is written on the drive by the OS that no longer shows it as the active logical partition. There is a file on the main partition of the old drive named boot.ini - make sure that it is there and hidden because that is the only way Windows knows where to go for loading the OS. Also, make sure it points to the correct directory (go to microsoft.com/technet and search on boot.ini to find out how to correctly format the file for your PC). If you just want to recover the addresses in Outlook, search that drive for a .pst file - that is where Outlook keeps your Inbox information. If none of this pertains to you, are you getting anything on the screen past post?

 

[desolationw]

it is likely your old drive was called 'Local Disk (H' rename it to this and try it. if it works then rename it to Old Disk when its in your old computer.

 

[evongugg]

Try this. I do not know for sure if it works:

After you use the Windows Disk Management snap-in tool to mark your primary partition as active, the computer may not start, and you may receive the following error message:
NTLDR is missing.

Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;Q315261

 

[gpfear]

The partition is most likely not active. Also, how did you install the drive in your new pc. Consider that you have 4 ides to use including primary master or slave and secondary master or slave. What are the jumper settings on the drive?? Make sure the drive is showing in the bios and then check the partition. Look up UBCD, works great for these situations.

 

[Steve-A-Reno]

If you are connecting your "old" drive to the same IDE cable as the "new" one, be sure to check that the jumpers on your old drive are set to "slave". With your "new" drive set to "master", the hard drive master and slave devices should then be shown as such on your screen when your system first boots up. Having two drives set as "master" on your IDE cable can prevent system bootup.

 

[Codesmith]

Bad news. The drive's name is completely irrelevant and changing it affects absolutely nothing.

Even changing the drive letter will have no affect as the drive letter assignments are stored in Windows Registry and changing it under one OS won't cause it to change in another.

If you only did what you said then there is no reason why the drive should not work exactly as it did before when you returned it to the original system.

So what could make a difference?

Incorrect jumper settings.
Connecting the drive to a different port without changing the boot settings in CMOS setup.
Converting the OS partition from primary to logical.
Changing the drive's active partition.
Deleting files.

Installing XP with both drives attached, resulting in some soft of messed up dual boot environment which places certain critical files on just one OS partition.

Rough treatment of the drive, resulting in damage.

BTW I repair PCs and I routinely connect hard drive from old OS to my XP system for testing, data recovery, backups ....

I have never had a problem with a drive working different once restored to its original jumper settings and reconnected to the original system in exactly the same way as I found it.

 

[cptblackeye]

I can't help with why your HDD won't work in your old system , but i can help get your email and such. Hook up the old drive to the new system and open explorer. Look at your old drive and click on documents & settings. Then click on the user that has the info you need. Make sure explorer is set to show hidden files (do this in folder options). click on local settings, then application data, then Microsoft, then outlook. You will see a file named Outlook which is an Office Data File. That is the file which has all your emails, addresses and such. Copy it. Create a new user on your new system and follow the same steps and replace the outlook file with the one you just copied. after you open outlook from the new user you can just copy your stuff into your normal user. This way you won't lose anything new in your current user on new system. If your not worried about that then just copy outlook file to you as user and skip the new user part. I do this everytime I do a fresh install (once a year).

 

[KOne]

i did the same thing as pwrflwr. i put my hdd from my old setup into my new one as a secondary drive, but my problem is my old drive had a password on some folders, now i can't access these folder. can someone give a hand on what i need to do. i booted into the 2nd drive but i can't use my keyboard or mouse to enter my password.

 

[PCcashCow]

i did the same thing as pwrflwr. i put my hdd from my old setup into my new one as a secondary drive, but my problem is my old drive had a password on some folders, now i can't access these folder. can someone give a hand on what i need to do. i booted into the 2nd drive but i can't use my keyboard or mouse to enter my password.

If your booting into your old system, KVM might need drivers to type. You should be able to fix your issue by adding admin rights to the folder and use xcopy to move the files.

 

[KOne]

how do i add admin rights to the folder?

ahh the Incredible shrinking wallet! don't you hate it when that happens.

 

[PCcashCow]

Some passworded folders can be worked around by adding local administrator rights to the folder properties. This way only the domain or local admins, plus the owner can hit the folder. My not always work, but when doing simple forensics you could get a hit with this. Regardless you can run a free rainbow table password cracker against it. I've seen them work on pen drives.