Is there a way to install an old hard drive without format it.

[antjo]

Hi everybody,

Before, i had no problem installing another hard drive (250 GB), however For awhile i decided to install Windows XP on my computer (with recovery disc come with computer) because sometimes it automaticly shut down, and i have no idea what to do beside recover it.

Anyway, after recovering my computer, it keeps asking me to reformat my hard drive (the additional one).
So my question is, is there a way to recover my files on that additional hard drive and install it without reformat it ? All of my precious family pictures are in there.

Please help me, thank you
Thank you,

 

[onestar]

If I read your post correctly, you seem to have two hard drives. right?

If so, you need not format the second drive after you use your recovery CDs. One note of caution however, Recovery using the factory CDs almost always reformats the destination drive.

Using a OEM or retail XP disk, it may not be possible to do a repair installation because of the differences in various OEM machines, bios, etc.

Before you do anything, your best bet is to transfer your sacred photos to another machine, hard drive, usb or external drive.

 

[BustedSony]

Hi everybody,

after recovering my computer, it keeps asking me to reformat my hard drive (the additional one).
So my question is, is there a way to recover my files on that additional hard drive and install it without reformat it ? All of my precious family pictures are in there.

Taken to its basics, what you are saying is that the second hard drive is no longer recognized. There is a good chance that it was used with AHCI enabled in the bios, then the BIOS was changed to IDE mode which will result in the drive not being recognized in Windows. Or maybe a driver is missing for the Hard Drive after the repair. There may very well not actually be anything wrong with the data drive.