I have a 60 GB harddrive that was a slave drive on my old computer (a
Dell Dimension LX, running Windows XP Pro). The primary drive on that
computer has apparently crashed. I now need to take my old slave
drive and put it on a new computer (a Dell Dimension 8250, running
Windows XP Home edition) as a slave or as a second primary drive. (I
already have a DVD and a CD ROM on the new computer, and they are
taking up both of the current "secondary" spots, as I read in the
bios.)
I added the second drive to the new Dell Dimension 8250 and set the
jumpers on both drives to "cable select". This was the only
configuration that would apparently let me boot to Windows XP with
both drives connected. It is also the only jumper config that I tried that let me
see both drives in the BIOS.
Windows is unable to see my old slave drive in my new computer. Even
when I go to the "Disk Management" section within "Computer
Management," I am unable to see the drive.
Dell Tech Support advises I need to repartition and format my old
slave drive using FDISK before Windows will be able to see it.
However, I find it very hard to believe that if my primary drive
crashes, it is impossible for me to now recover my old drive D (my old
slave drive) -- a perfectly healthy drive. Is Dell Support mistaken,
or is there a way for me recover the data from my slave drive? If so,
how can I get Windows XP on my new computer to recognize my old slave
drive? |
Clarification of Question by
pcaballero-ga
on
09 Apr 2003 21:52 PDT
For clarification: The drive in question is formatted NTFS.
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Request for Question Clarification by
feilong-ga
on
09 Apr 2003 22:08 PDT
If your problem is only to access and recover the files of the old
slave drive to the new HDD of the Dell Dimension 8250, you can do the
following:
1) Disconnect the DVD and CD-ROM drives from the IDE cable.
2) Make sure that ONLY the new drive is attached to the first IDE
cable (set to master) and ONLY the slave drive is attached to the
secondary IDE cable(also set to master)
3) Set the BIOS to boot sequence Floppy, C, and find other boot
device. I'm not familiar with Dell BIOS environment so you need to
find the settings similar to this. Make sure that the the new drive
(the one with WinXP) is the C drive.
4) Set the BIOS to enable plug and play OS and autodetect settings (if
there are any).
5) Save the settings and restart your system.
Windows should auto-detect the drives. You should be able to access
the old 60Gig slavedrive and copy the contents to the new drive.
I don't usually put potential answer here when requestiing for
clarification because some people may find the info here as an answer
and flee. In your case, I have no means to clarify things without
giving you a potential solution. I have to trust you on this one.
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Clarification of Question by
pcaballero-ga
on
09 Apr 2003 22:35 PDT
Thanks for your reply. I just now tried your recommended solution
(steps 1-5) without success. I did not see anything in the BIOS, by
the way, that related to enabling Plug and Play OSs. Any other
suggestions?
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Clarification of Question by
pcaballero-ga
on
09 Apr 2003 22:38 PDT
I should also add that the BIOS did succeed in seeing both drives, and
even detecting their capacities. However, Windows still cannot see
the second drive.
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Request for Question Clarification by
feilong-ga
on
09 Apr 2003 23:14 PDT
In Windows device manager, what are the IDE devices available? There
should be no DVD and CD-ROM drives because they are disconnected.
Remove these if they are still registered. If C drive is the only IDE
device present, refresh the device manager profiles and see if the
slave drive will appear.
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Clarification of Question by
pcaballero-ga
on
10 Apr 2003 14:18 PDT
I did disable the CD ROM and DVD, so they are not visible in the
control panel.
Both disk drives _are_ visible in control panel, but the old slave is
still not visible in My Computer, nor under the "Disk Management"
section within "Computer Management." I cannot, therefore, seem to
gain access to the data.
I tried refreshing the device manager profiles, but the slave drive is
still not accessible.
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Request for Question Clarification by
feilong-ga
on
11 Apr 2003 08:22 PDT
This time, change step 2 that I mentioned earlier. Make sure that ONLY
the new drive is attached to the first IDE cable (set to cable select)
and ONLY the old 60GB slave drive is attached to the secondary IDE
cable(also set to cable select). Go to the device manager and refresh
the profiles. Restart once more and see if you can access finally
access it.
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Clarification of Question by
pcaballero-ga
on
11 Apr 2003 13:13 PDT
>This time, change step 2 that I mentioned earlier. Make sure that ONLY
>the new drive is attached to the first IDE cable (set to cable select)
>and ONLY the old 60GB slave drive is attached to the secondary IDE
>cable(also set to cable select). Go to the device manager and refresh
>the profiles. Restart once more and see if you can access finally
>access it.
Okay, I tried the above with no success. Is there anything else we can try?
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Request for Question Clarification by
feilong-ga
on
11 Apr 2003 21:23 PDT
I really wanted to help you so I searched for an answer and found
this:
Society of Broadcast Engineers Kentucky Chapter 35 - SBE.org
"NTFS: The New Technology File System is used solely by Windows NT. It
uses a Unicode character set and supports long filenames up to 255
characters. It's strength lies in complete "government level" security
and the ability to recover from crashes. It's also a pure 32-bit file
system that cannot be seen by OSes using FAT16 or FAT32. IT CANNOT SEE
PARTITIONS CONFIGURED WITH FAT32 FILE SYSTEMS."
http://www.sbe35.org/CompuGloss/N.htm
So that's the reason why your NTFS WinXP can't see the FAT32 slave
drive although it was detected by the BIOS. You still have hope
though. You can follow the instructions through this link:
NTFS.com
Questions and Answers
Read question 3 and 4
http://www.ntfs.com/faq.htm
If these help, please let me know.
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