moving HDD question

Will Robinson · Post by **Will Robinson** » Sat Nov 13, 2004 12:54 pm

Spin off question from other thread to cut down on unnecessary reading:

Can I take a HDD from one machine that already has data on it and put it in another machine and access those files?

Was created in Win2k
NTFS
WesternDigital 160 gig

BAAL · Post by **BAAL** » Sat Nov 13, 2004 1:05 pm

data could be accessed..however trying to run an os in a different box that was pre-installed is a bad idea.

Also, u might have problems if the drive you are moving is formatted in NTFS and the other box is a FAT or FAT 32 system

Krom · Post by **Krom** » Sat Nov 13, 2004 1:06 pm

If the destination computer is running Windows 2000 or later you will not have any problems.

Will Robinson · Post by **Will Robinson** » Sat Nov 13, 2004 1:12 pm

Thanks, will win XP recognize the 160gig HDD without a controller card?
PS: the drive does have an OS on it but I don't want to run it.

Krom · Post by **Krom** » Sat Nov 13, 2004 1:18 pm

If the drive is connected to the computer and recognized in BIOS, XP will be able to use it.

I had assumed you were booting off a OS already installed on that computer, just adding this 160 GB drive in on a second channel. If so it will work fine, when XP boots up it will probably pop up a notification "new hardware found" and might ask for a reboot.

woodchip · Post by **woodchip** » Sat Nov 13, 2004 2:05 pm

See my reply in your other thread

Jeff250 · Post by **Jeff250** » Sat Nov 13, 2004 4:12 pm

In the unlikely event you NTFS-encrypted any of your files, those will be inaccessible.

Will Robinson · Post by **Will Robinson** » Sun Nov 14, 2004 9:14 am

Well I'm posting this from the problem machine. I managed to get WinXP installed on the C drive...well actually Win98 is on the 'new' C drive

It seems you can't upgrade from win2k to winXP...so I had to go back to win98 first so I could go up to winXP!

So winXP is on the 'new' E drive.

Oh well there are worse things than losing 1.99 Gig to a win98 install I never asked for....like losing 160 Gig of data because winXP doesn't know how to read a drive bigger than 132 Gig's.!!!

The problem is the drive shows up in Drive Management as 128gig un allocated space. It doesn't show up in "My Computer" ie; Windows Explorer.

It's full of stuff I need so I don't dare try to use it in the condition win XP currently see's it.

It was the same way in Win2k but because of the Promise Ultra 100tx2 controller card Win2k was able to see it for the full 160 Gig.
And now for some reason WinXP doesn't want to install any drivers for the controller card!!!

So, if I don't get the controller card to help WinXP 'show' the drive to me how can I get access to the data on the drive?

Help me please!

woodchip · Post by **woodchip** » Sun Nov 14, 2004 11:03 am

Not sure but you may have to partition that drive Will.
I know Partition Magic will partion that without loosing any data and I think XP will also. Since you are online you can check at MS's website for info or perhaps some kind soul here remembers (I only did it once)

CDN_Merlin · Post by **CDN_Merlin** » Sun Nov 14, 2004 11:50 am

XP needs SP1 to see over 132 gigs. No data was lost. Install service pack 2 and you will be fine

Krom · Post by **Krom** » Sun Nov 14, 2004 11:56 am

winXP doesn't know how to read a drive bigger than 132 Gig's

Wrong.

AceCombat · Post by **AceCombat** » Sun Nov 14, 2004 8:41 pm

DAYUM Krom.....is that all pr0n on the E Drive?

Jeff250 · Post by **Jeff250** » Sun Nov 14, 2004 8:51 pm

The hassle-free way around this is to make an SP2 slipstream CD. This should help:
http://www.autopatcher.com/autostreamer.html

You can also slipstream controller card drivers to prevent inserting a floppy, but this is far from hassle-free.

Also, Win2k Professional can only be upgraded by XP Professional, not Home. Win2k Server+ cannot be upgraded by XP.

Will Robinson · Post by **Will Robinson** » Sun Nov 14, 2004 9:18 pm

CDN_Merlin wrote:XP needs SP1 to see over 132 gigs. No data was lost. Install service pack 2 and you will be fine

I don't know, I installed XP home that came with service pack2 and it didn't see more than about 129.9 of the 160 gig drive in question.

I installed the Promise card and the drive in question into a win2k box and it see's it as 149.9gig's which is probably the whole thing (Western Digital 160 gig drive)...but it doesn't have a drive letter and windows explorer *still* can't see the files on it!

It shows up in Disk Management as a dynamic drive, un-allocated.
It's as if all I need to do is assign it drive letter and it will all be there...but how? Can't you just call the whole thing a volume somehow and the OS will add it to the list of drives?

*edit* Krom, do you have to do anything special to get XP to see a drive that big?

Will Robinson · Post by **Will Robinson** » Sun Nov 14, 2004 9:29 pm

Jeff250 wrote:...Also, Win2k Professional can only be upgraded by XP Professional, not Home. Win2k Server+ cannot be upgraded by XP.

Yea, originally I was trying to use XP pro but it hosed me so bad I went and bought a XP home cd just to eliminate the possibility I had a hardware problem.
The home version went on fine after going back to 98 first.
My XP Pro disk is a corporate volume liscense that my brother gave me from his office, he gets them free from Cisco or someone he writes software for, he's a MAC user and doesn't use microsoft except to test stuff...
I guess he gave me a worn out disk.

Will Robinson · Post by **Will Robinson** » Sun Nov 14, 2004 11:42 pm

The plot thickens on my unreadable hard drive.
I downloaded a demo version of GetDataBack NTFS and it checked the drive and
identified the file system as SFTS (secure file system (Peter Gutmann)) instead of NFTS.
So of course I googled this Peter dude who apparantly snuck into my computer and encrypted my files.
I found this entry in a forum where someone else had a similar problem:

Recently I took my 120GB NTFS drive to my brother's
house. He connected it to his computer, booted up and
imported the drive using "import foreign disk". It came
up and he was able to copy files. When I brought the
drive back to my computer (where it originally came
from), it would not reactive or import.

I then downloaded a program from Runtime(.org) called
System Info and it stated the drive was a "(Secure File
System (Peter Gutmann))" not an NTFS. Well, I managed to
find out there is a single byte in the partition record
that tells what type of partition it is. Mine had somehow
become the Secure File System (42h) instead of NTFS
(07h). I took the drive to a friend's house and he used
DiskExplorer by Acronis and edited that one byte. After
two reboots, the drive was back to normal.

So, it looks like I'll be trying to find out about this DiskExplorer by Acronis...
Anyone here know about this stuff?

Vindicator · Post by **Vindicator** » Sun Nov 14, 2004 11:56 pm

/skims thread

Will Robinson wrote:I don't know, I installed XP home that came with service pack2 and it didn't see more than about 129.9 of the 160 gig drive in question.

Might be a BIOS limitation. A lot of older computers cant see hard drives larger than 137gb. Try updating to the newest BIOS.

Will Robinson · Post by **Will Robinson** » Mon Nov 15, 2004 12:23 am

Vindicator wrote:/skims thread

Will Robinson wrote:I don't know, I installed XP home that came with service pack2 and it didn't see more than about 129.9 of the 160 gig drive in question.
Might be a BIOS limitation. A lot of older computers cant see hard drives larger than 137gb. Try updating to the newest BIOS.

I'll look into that, although the one that see's it as only 129.9 is an ASUS P4S333, bios written last year, but anything is possible.

Krom · Post by **Krom** » Mon Nov 15, 2004 12:33 am

Will Robinson wrote:*edit* Krom, do you have to do anything special to get XP to see a drive that big?

Negitive, it is two 250 GB drives on my motherboards Silicon Image 3112 SATA RAID chip, as soon as the driver for the RAID chip is installed on XP it can access the drive. I could even install XP on the RAID if I wanted too.

I aggree with Vindicator, it could be the 137 GB BIOS limitation, try looking at the BIOS updates for your computer to see if one addresses a drive size issue.

AceCombat wrote:DAYUM Krom.....is that all pr0n on the E Drive?

No, 237 GB of Anime, 26 GB of MP3s, and the rest is either movies, temporary junk or DVD images.