New Computer, Old HDD

[scomitt3342]

I recently purchased a new computer and need to get my data off my old HDD. The old HDD was running a 32-bit Windows 7 and the new computer is a 64-bit. When I installed/connected the old HDD to the motherboard it was not recognized what-so-ever. So my buddy let me borrow a USB 2.0 to SATA/IDE Hard Drive adapter. Once I connected it to my new computer the OS found it, but then was unable to download any driver for it. So my computer STILL does not recognize my old HDD. How can I salvage all my old files?

 

[John_VanKirk]

Hello,

What is the name and Model # of the old HDD, and is it SATA or PATA (IDE)? Was this a Primary System Drive from your old computer?
It does not make any difference if your Data files were stored on a computer running a 32 bit OS, and you want to read them with a computer running a 64 bit OS.

Give us a description as to how you connected this drive to you new system. Maybe it is just a simple config setting that needs to be made to get it working

 

[scomitt3342]

The old HDD is a Western Digital WD 1600BB. It's an IDE and yes it was the primary drive for my old system. My new motherboard supports an IDE but the primary HDD is a SATA. I connected the old HDD to the motherboard, placed it as a slave and the computer still didn't recognize it.

 

[John_VanKirk]

Hi again,

That's a nice IDE drive. Still sell them actively.

It can be a little confusing, but in the BIOS you set up the drive order for the BIOS to look for Hdw devices to load an OS.

There you set the SATA as the first device (Drive 0), and probably the IDE drive as the second device (Drive 1), possibly a DVD or CD in position 3.

However on the IDE cable, you have to plug the single IDE device at the end of the cable, and set it as the Master, since there is no other IDE device on the cable. That may solve the enigma. It's the Master on the IDE cable, but second in position for the BIOS to load.

Make that change on the cable, and in the BIOS, save, then reboot and check in the BIOS that it is ordered correctly.
Then boot up into Windows.

Check the Device Manager to see that the OS recogizes both hard drives under the Disk Drive section.

Then go to the Disk Management snap-in and see if both drives are listed. In the bottom section you should see Disk 1 there. You may need to give it a name and assign it a Drive Letter, like K: for backUp. Previously it was assigned DriveLetter C, or you may have assigned it a name and DriveLetter. It does present a problem if you have 2 drives with the same DriveLetter, as one will not be recognized.

In the graphic section at the bottom, the Disk structure should read Basic, 160GB, Online. If it says Offline, right click on it and change it to Online.
The File Section just to the right should read: DiskName (DriveLetter), 160 GB, NTFS, Healthy, (Primary Partition).

If all is as listed, you should be good to copy your older data files to your new SATA system drive.

 

[scomitt3342]

Ok I will give that a try. So just for peace of my mind, do I need any drivers for my old hdd? Because at this point, this is my understanding.

 

[John_VanKirk]

Hi again,

Since you are running a 64 bit OS, must be either Vista or Win-7. You don't need any additional hardware drivers for the IDE drive. They are in the OS. Let us know how everything works out for you. When Windows recognizes a common hardware device at boot, it automatically loads the drivers for it. You can check in the device manager, and when it recognizes the IDE drive, if you double click on it, the properties dialog box opens, it should say "this device is working progerly. Click on the driver tab and it will show you what drivers were loaded as an interface between the hardware item and the OS.

 

[scomitt3342]

Ok so far the BIOS recognized the old HDD. I was also able to see it under Computer Management. It is currently being displayed as Disk 0. Unfortunately I can not do anything to it due to an error message I got about an input/output error. It is now showing that my old HDD is unallocated and I don't know what to do from here. Any advice?

 

[scomitt3342]

I am unable to initialize the hdd. The exact error message is "The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error."

 

[John_VanKirk]

Hi again,

There may be a BIOS setting or two that not set up correctly. The Disk 0 is the system drive which should your new Win-7 64 bit OS on the SATA drive.
Go back to the BIOS and in the Standard CMOS area, make sure you have just the two HDDs recognized, and set to [Auto]. You may also have a DVD or other device also seen there. Some BIOS systems still list the drives as IDE channels, and your SATA drive may be detected as an IDE drive there. Jot down what channel and master or slave. Your PATA drive should also be listed there, and jot down what channel it is on. Should be Master.

Then go to the Advanced BIOS features and click on the Hard Disk Boot Priority and make sure the SATA drive (the channel its on) is the first HDD to boot. That makes it your system drive. If you also have a choice of "First Boot Device" make sure is it Hard Disk. F10 to save and reboot

Then in Disk Management, your new SATA drive should be listed as Disk 0 and be listed as Healthy, System, Active, Primary Partition. It should be Drive C.

Your old drive should be Disk 1. It should be listed as Basic, Online. Just to the right in the graphical area it should have a name, and Drive Letter. If the OLD IDE drive by chance also is Drive C from your old computer, you can right click on the graphical drive area, and change the drive letter to say "K" or some other non used designation. This drive should not be listed as Active.

Possibly making the BIOS changes will correct the problem. However the fact that your old IDE drive was listed as Unallocated, means the OS did not see a File system on it or data on it. Don't make any Partition change or Reformat it or you will lose all the data on the old drive.

 

[scomitt3342]

So I am currently looking at my CMOS and i am showing that IDE 1 Master is the new HDD. The slave on IDE 1 the dvd. My old hdd is on ide 4 and is the slave. I tried to set it as the master but I got an error message stating that an OS could not be loaded. Probably because both hdd have windows 7 on them. one is the 64-bit and the other is the 32. I can not change in the CMOS the actual channel on each of the drives. It's an automatic feature. Any ideas how to work around this?

 

[scomitt3342]

I just rebooted my desktop and went back into computer management and got the same error. This is discouraging.

 

[John_VanKirk]

What a bummer!

With the older IDE system in the BIOS, it can be confusing. What you want to do is go to the Advanced Bios Features page in the BIOS, and open the Hard Disk Boot Priority, and set that SATA drive as first. Might set the DVD as second, and specifically set the older IDE as 3rd. That way it will look for your SATA first, and finding an OS, boot it up. Setting the boot priority is a separate step, and in many BIOS, a separate page.

What MB are you using in your new computer?


"So I am currently looking at my CMOS and i am showing that IDE 1 Master is the new HDD. The slave on IDE 1 the dvd. My old hdd is on ide 4 and is the slave. I tried to set it as the master but I got an error message stating that an OS could not be loaded."

 

[scomitt3342]

I am currently looking at my BIOS page right now and I just set up the HD boot priority to be the new hdd, then bootable add-in cards, then my old hdd. Those are my only choices under this menu. Then I set my 1st boot device to Hard disk, the 2nd boot device to CDROM, then my 3rd boot device to Hard disk. The only thing here is that the options when setting these devices are very generic (i.e. Floppy, LS120, Hard Disk, CDROM, ZIP, USB-FDD, USB-ZIP, USB-CDROM, USB-HDD, or Legacy LAN) The old hdd is still displayed as disk 0 and i am still getting the error that i can not initialize the disk because of an I/O device error. The MB is an ASUS P8P67-M REV 3.0.

 

[John_VanKirk]

Try one more thing, set the "old" HDD on the cable to the proximal connector, more in the middle, not at the end, and set it to "slave". That means changing the jumper on the back of the HDD from "master" to "slave". Usually on WD drives, there is a paper diagram on the drive showing how to set the jumper for master or slave. There is nothing else on this connector data ribbon except the "old" HDD is there?

Then disconnect the power from this "old" HDD and let the computer boot up normally, to have the BIOS see just the new HDD. It should come up in DiskMgmt as Disk 0
.
Finally shut down, connect the power plug into the "old" HDD and see if it will boot the way you want

 

[scomitt3342]

So here's the latest and greatest. Having the old hdd installed inside the computer has lead me to no success. So assuming that because the BIOS has already recognized the old hdd, then the drivers will not change. This was the original issue with trying to connect my old hdd via a USB to IDE adapter. The drivers weren't found. So I reconnected the old hdd to the USB to IDE and under computer management it is now recognized at Disk 1. BUT when I try to initialize it now, I am getting the device is not ready. ??? Not sure what that means. And here's a question for you: When I click on initialize there are two options: 1) MBR or 2) GPT. What's the difference and which one should I be checking? I have been doing the MBR. So I guess now the troubleshooting is why my device is "not ready"?

 

[John_VanKirk]

Hello,

You've certainly had a lot of frustration with that HDD!
Connecting it up to the USB adapter, you have to set the HDD to a Master, by changing the jumper back to a Master, and possibly that will make Windows recognize the drive.

There are 2 kinds of partition systems to set up a hard drive initially. The standard old time MBR (master boot record) that you should use with the standard BIOS, which limits the choices to 4 primary partitions or 3 primary partitions and 1 extended partition. It limits the newer HDD's to 2 TB of space. That's the problem Windows has now addressing more than 2 TB of data, and why we need a "new" file system now that we ar seeing even larger HDDs

The newer partition system is called GPT (Globally Unique ID Partition Table) is part of the new EFI (extended firmware interface) "BIOS" system that is 10 years in the works, just now showing up on Motherboards. A new ASUS P67 Delux has the new EFI built into it. It has a GUID (128 bit) ID number assigned to each partition, and can have an unlimited number of partitions, although Windows limits it to 128 partitions. Also the new GPT can address 18 exabytes of data so there really is no limitation on space.

Hope you get you "old" drive talking to Windows. Each step is a learning experience, and even better if it actually is successful!