Hard drive must be initiated

[harlan_32]

Hello,
I installed Windows on a new hard drive, but can't transfer files to it from the old disks. On one of the old disks, I upgraded to Windows7, and it will work independently, but I can not transfer any files. The other old disk has a problem of shuting itself down.
I can put the new disk together with the updated old disk,, and though either one of them will work independently, the booted hard drive will not recognize the othe disk, saying it needs to be "initiated.: I am assuming that means formatted by the other disk. That would, of course, distroy the files I want to save.
I also tried a special cable between two computers, and an external hd setup.

 

[dalaran]

Are both disk recognized by the BIOS?
Do you have the exact error message and when does it happens?
(Before loading windows, during windows is loading or after?)

Are these IDE or SATA disk?
(IDE drives might need to be set as slave or master, to work together.)

If I understand you right, windows is installed on both hard-drives? It might some kind of conflict between the 2.

One thing you could try is using a live cd (such as linux Mint) to boot your computer to check if both drives are recognized from there. If so copy your data, remove or format the old hard drive and you're done.