HDD Format? I don't want to

[tommyj]

I had to change my computer out for a new one because I had some problems. But, that's besides the point. Anyway here is my problem:

I have a lot of information on my HDD that I need. I mean I really need it. So I have another HDD and I installed WinXP and set everything up and now I finally got it working. I hooked up my HDD from my old computer (you know, the one that I have a lot of stuff on) and when I try to access it, Windows says that I have to format it so that I can read it. Format bad. Format erase everything. That's bad. So how can I access all of the information by not having to format it? I can format it later, but for right now I don't want to.

Thanks,
-tommy

[John Prophet]

Welcome to the forum!!

hmm, usually you can just do like you did and read the drive....maybe the drive is bad?


Maybe someone else can chime in....perhaps you need to use the same name as you had on the old drive?? I mean the same user name etc.

Is there any chance that the old drive was ntfs and the new is fat32??

[Atomic Rooster]

Have you set the jumper on the old drive as "Slave"?

[Bill in SD, CA]

Originally posted by John Prophet
Is there any chance that the old drive was ntfs and the new is fat32??

My thoughts.

Bill

[truckpuller]

hes gona have to make one slave and one master to be able to do it gona also need a os on both hard drives.

Guess it would help if we knew what OS your using and the size of the 2 hard drives.

[LeftCoast]

Originally posted by Bill in SD, CA
My thoughts.

Bill

The boot drive of XP has to be NTFS, right?


Sometimes in the bios you can turn off (deselect) HDD 1. It's like this on my 400SC. Just an outside chance, but worth a look (provided your jumpers are set correctly).

[John Prophet]

no..xp can run fat32...you just dont get the real password security/permissions/compression etc that u would with nyfs

[LeftCoast]

That is so right.

I better run Killdisk...

[roley]

Have you got access to ghost???

What you may want to do is ghost it to an image on the new HDD in DOS mode...

Then use image viewer to selct the data you want...jetison the rest...after a period of grace.


========

Consider also that your old disk is formatted with FAT16...were you using Win95?

So, I would suggest also getting hold of a partitioning utility and use to to change the file system from whatever it is to FAT32...

NB:I may have not said the right things with the file systems...but I do not know all the of the details of your system...you'll need to write more there.

There are finally some disaster recovery products available on the market...they are very expensive...but make startling promises...ie recovery of data from computers in flooded offices etc....so you may want to check it out...: http://www.ontrack.com/

Rohan

[jmichna]

XP, whether installed on new (boot) drive as FAT32 or NTFS will have no problem reading old drive with either FAT16, FAT32 or NTFS file system. I suspect, as others have mentioned, he needs to ensure old drive is set as "slave" and/or the old drive is bad.

tommyj,
Can you download the disk utility your old hard drive manufacturer provides, and test your old drive for problems?