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Hard drive question

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DoPeFi$h   01-04-2009 at 04:21:02 PM

I have a new sys - AMD 64 X2 dual core 3.0 gig, 2 gig ram, with a 40 gig
SATA that has XP Home edition installed on it.

My Problem---> My old sys had a cpu fan go out and burnt up the cpu and board.My hard drive is a maxtor 100 gig IDE h/d that has XP Pro and alot
of data which i am hoping i can access again.

Can i INSTALL this drive and setup to dual boot? (would this be the proper way)?

Any help in this matter would be greatly appreciated:)

Thx guys :bounce:

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montyuk   01-04-2009 at 05:59:16 PM
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i think you would be fine putting the xp pro drive in the working machine on a lower priority port (say if xp home is sata0, then xp pro in sata1).

the alternative is to grab a sata/ide convertor to usb and plug it into a usb port (they do exist - i got mine off ebay) when the machines already turned on, backup anything you want to keep, format it and put it in the machine, and then move stuff back to it.

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GhislainG   01-04-2009 at 06:16:40 PM
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If the new system has an IDE controller (most systems do), then just connect the old IDE disk and make sure that the SATA disk is the boot disk. Then move your data from the old to the new disk, but you could also leave them on it. Isn't a 40GB disk rather small for a new system?

Reply to GhislainG
DoPeFi$h   01-04-2009 at 06:33:07 PM
- 0 +

Thanks guys.
Yes 40 gig is small but my intention was to install or format the 100 gig drive and use as well giving me 140 gig:)

Once again thanks :)

Reply to DoPeFi$h
DoPeFi$h   01-04-2009 at 07:09:29 PM
- 0 +

Ok guys connected the h/d to my new sys, went into bios and it came up under IDE slave perfectly.(cd-r is set to ide master).
The sata drive still set to boot.
o/s still loads fine and under sys properties/device manager
the drive shows up.
But under my computer or in windows explorer the drive
doesnt show up so i can access.No drive letter assigned
What gives????

HELP :)
:bounce:

Reply to DoPeFi$h
DoPeFi$h   01-04-2009 at 07:36:19 PM
- 0 +

BTW under computer mangement/disk management the drive in question is showing unallocated? what does this mean? The file systems on both drives are NTFS btw.Hopefully i have given u enough info.

Reply to DoPeFi$h
montyuk   01-04-2009 at 07:52:07 PM
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ok that isnt good, im pretty sure that means the partition has been lost.

problem is activating and partitioning that drive will wipe it, so you need to look into some recovery software to get your data back, before doing much else in windows.

i bought this one a while back and found it pretty good - http://www.handyrecovery.com/ you can download a trial and see what it might be able to recover for you before paying for it.

im sure the others here have plenty of other recovery recommendations.

question - would partition magic be able to deal with this kind of problem?

Reply to montyuk
GhislainG   01-04-2009 at 08:00:51 PM
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Try to boot from that disk (several newer motherboards make that very easy by pressing F8, F12 or another key at POST to bring up a boot device menu). If not, try to set it as your boot disk in the BIOS. If the system starts to boot from it, then you know that your data should still be on it.

If your old system's motherboard and CPU both failed, are you sure the disk wasn't also affected?

Reply to GhislainG
DoPeFi$h   01-04-2009 at 09:07:14 PM
- 0 +

Ok ghislaing, tried what u suggested and i get a disk boot failure when trying to boot to the disk.At this point if i cant recover the data its not the end of the world.My next question would be, is it safe to format and try to install xp on this drive to determine if the drive got damaged or its ok?
Doing this wont affect my new drive???

Just wanted to say this is a great site with some very helpful members.
Thank for all the quick and helpful responses:)

Reply to DoPeFi$h
GhislainG   01-04-2009 at 09:44:31 PM
- 0 +

You might still want to try the solution that montyuk suggested. If you can live without the old data (which makes sense since you never backed it up), then go ahead and format it.

If you want to keep your current Windows installation on the 40GB disk, there's no need to install Windows on the old 100GB disk. Just format it (don't select the Quick format option).

If you want to install Windows on the old disk, then you should disconnect the new SATA drive to avoid mistakes (unless it will become a data only disk).

Reply to GhislainG
DoPeFi$h   01-05-2009 at 12:07:04 AM
- 0 +

Thx Montyuk and Gish

Tried your recovery tool and got my data back:)))
Then format and the drive came up no problems

Thx for the help, keep up the good work
Great site

Reply to DoPeFi$h
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