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read from backed up second hard drive after installing new primary master
Ok. I'm not overly experienced, but let me explain my situation and
hopefully someone can, and will be willing, to help this desperate person. I was helping my neighbor with their pc. They have an older pc we're just trying to get a little more use out of. They had a small hard drive with windows xp on it. I wanted to install a newer larger hard drive for them. I installed the newer hard drive without any problems (formatting, install windows, etc). I installed it as master and put the old hard drive, which had a full windows xp install on it and other documents and files, as slave on the secondary ide channel. My intent was to then bring the machine live and copy their documents and other files to the new hard drive then trash the old one. Windows xp sees both drives. Bios sees both drives. When i click on the D drive in windows it says "disk in drive d is not formatted, do you want to format it now?". I clearly don't as that will lose all the data i am trying to get to. When i go into device manager, under disk drives, it also sees the drive. Under "volumes" there is nothing there so i click "populate" where it shows me the drive capacity. This is where i get a little fuzzy. Partition style says "master boot record (mbr)". Unallocated and reserved space both say 0mb. So, what does all this mean? I actually disconnected the larger new hard drive, set the old one up again as primary and tried to boot, thinking i would still be able to boot to windows since i never touched this drive. Bios recognizes the drive but then says "operating system failed to load" or something like that. Back at square one. What can i do to get the data off this drive? Would it help to try to access it as a secondary drive on another pc? I'm at a loss. I did back up their documents about 3 months ago when i did some other work for them and, luckily, they're not heavy users like me so they don't have a ton of new stuff that i'm worried about losing. But, then again, any lost data is bad. Please help. thanks in advance. Sorry for the long post. Let me know if i should post somewhere else. Chris |
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wrote:
........ They had a small hard drive with windows xp on it. I wanted to install a newer larger hard drive for them. I installed the newer hard drive without any problems (formatting, install windows, etc). Is the file format on the new HD the same as that of the old HD? I installed it as master and put the old hard drive, which had a full windows xp install on it and other documents and files, as slave on the secondary ide channel. My intent was to then bring the machine live and copy their documents and other files to the new hard drive then trash the old one. Then what? You'd have files on the new HD, but no installed operating system. Windows xp sees both drives. Bios sees both drives. When i click on the D drive in windows it says "disk in drive d is not formatted, do you want to format it now?". I clearly don't as that will lose all the data i am trying to get to. When i go into device manager, under disk drives, it also sees the drive. Under "volumes" there is nothing there so i click "populate" where it shows me the drive capacity. This is where i get a little fuzzy. Partition style says "master boot record (mbr)". Unallocated and reserved space both say 0mb. So, what does all this mean? I actually disconnected the larger new hard drive, set the old one up again as primary and tried to boot, thinking i would still be able to boot to windows since i never touched this drive. Bios recognizes the drive but then says "operating system failed to load" or something like that. Back at square one. What can i do to get the data off this drive? Standard procedure for moving an OS to a new HD is to clone the old HD's entire contents to the new HD using cloning software such as Synantec's Ghost or Acronis' True Image, or a handful of other cloning utilities, or the cloning utility that might have come with the retail package containing the new HD. Check to see if you can download such a utility from the manufacturer's website. When you do the cloning, be sure that the utility knows (or has been told by you) to copy the Master Boot Record to the new HD. If the utility is also to create the new partition on the new HD, tell it to make a "primary" partition and to mark the new partition on the new HD "active". Once the copying has been completed, don't boot up the new HD just yet. First disconnect the old HD's data cable or power cable or both. This isolates the new HD to prevent its new OS from seeing its "parent" when it boots up for the 1st time. Then startup the PC. The BIOS will see that there is only the new HD in the system, and it will pass control to the new HD's MBR, which in turn will pass control to the boot sector on the "active" partition, which will start ntldr there which will look at its boot.ini file.... etc., etc., and the new OS will load and start up. If it were to see its "parent" during its 1st startup, it would set pointers that will forever entangle it with its "parent" and you'd have siamesed OSes. But after the 1st startup in isolation, the new OS becomes an "adult", and subsequent startups with its "parent" visible doesn't affect the new OS. The most common procedure is then to put the new HD in place of the old HD on the IDE cable, and to set the new HD's jumpers to the jumper setting of the old HD (although neither action is really necessary), and use the new HD as you had used the old HD. Note that there is no real role corresponding to "Primary Master" as that designation only determines the default position of the HD in the BIOS's boot order - which can be changed at will during bootup. If you know how to adjust the boot.ini file on the old HD, you can reconnect the old HD, let it boot up, adjust its boot.ini file for multi-booting, and you can choose between the old OS and its files or the new OS and the copied files at boot time. Or, you could exchange the new HD's and the old HD's jumper settings and use the new HD's boot manager and boot.ini file to do the multi-booting. Or, you could remove the old HD and use it as a bootable archive of the system that is now on the new HD. Or, you could leave the old HD in the system, reformat its partition, and use it as extra storage space. With 2 (or 3, or 4) HDs in your PC, the combinations of uses becomes awesome. By making one of the HDs removable through use of a removable HD tray, and by making the power to each HD switchable, the ease and flexibility becomes quite amazing. *TimDaniels* |
#6
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Ignore Timmy, he obviously has severe reading problems combined with an
enormous urge to rant. "Timothy Daniels" wrote in message wrote: ........ They had a small hard drive with windows xp on it. I wanted to install a newer larger hard drive for them. I installed the newer hard drive without any problems (formatting, install windows, etc). Is the file format on the new HD the same as that of the old HD? I installed it as master and put the old hard drive, which had a full windows xp install on it and other documents and files, as slave on the secondary ide channel. My intent was to then bring the machine live and copy their documents and other files to the new hard drive then trash the old one. Then what? You'd have files on the new HD, but no installed operating system. Hmm, "install windows" means that there no installed operating system, Timmy? Windows xp sees both drives. Bios sees both drives. When i click on the D drive in windows it says "disk in drive d is not formatted, do you want to format it now?". I clearly don't as that will lose all the data i am trying to get to. When i go into device manager, under disk drives, it also sees the drive. Under "volumes" there is nothing there so i click "populate" where it shows me the drive capacity. This is where i get a little fuzzy. Partition style says "master boot record (mbr)". Unallocated and reserved space both say 0mb. So, what does all this mean? I actually disconnected the larger new hard drive, set the old one up again as primary and tried to boot, thinking i would still be able to boot to windows since i never touched this drive. Bios recognizes the drive but then says "operating system failed to load" or something like that. Back at square one. What can i do to get the data off this drive? Standard procedure for moving an OS to a new HD is to clone the old HD's entire contents to the new HD using cloning software such as Synantec's Ghost or Acronis' True Image, or a handful of other cloning utilities, or the cloning utility that might have come with the retail package containing the new HD. Check to see if you can download such a utility from the manufacturer's website. The old one doesn't boot, Timmy, so the clone won't either. When you do the cloning, be sure that the utility knows (or has been told by you) to copy the Master Boot Record to the new HD. If the utility is also to create the new partition on the new HD, tell it to make a "primary" partition and to mark the new partition on the new HD "active". Once the copying has been completed, don't boot up the new HD just yet. First disconnect the old HD's data cable or power cable or both. This isolates the new HD to prevent its new OS from seeing its "parent" when it boots up for the 1st time. Then startup the PC. The BIOS will see that there is only the new HD in the system, and it will pass control to the new HD's MBR, which in turn will pass control to the boot sector on the "active" partition, which will start ntldr there which will look at its boot.ini file.... etc., etc., and the new OS will load and start up. If it were to see its "parent" during its 1st startup, it would set pointers that will forever entangle it with its "parent" and you'd have siamesed OSes. But after the 1st startup in isolation, the new OS becomes an "adult", and subsequent startups with its "parent" visible doesn't affect the new OS. The most common procedure is then to put the new HD in place of the old HD on the IDE cable, and to set the new HD's jumpers to the jumper setting of the old HD (although neither action is really necessary), and use the new HD as you had used the old HD. Note that there is no real role corresponding to "Primary Master" as that designation only determines the default position of the HD in the BIOS's boot order - which can be changed at will during bootup. If you know how to adjust the boot.ini file on the old HD, you can reconnect the old HD, let it boot up, adjust its boot.ini file for multi-booting, and you can choose between the old OS and its files or the new OS and the copied files at boot time. Or, you could exchange the new HD's and the old HD's jumper settings and use the new HD's boot manager and boot.ini file to do the multi-booting. Or, you could remove the old HD and use it as a bootable archive of the system that is now on the new HD. Or, you could leave the old HD in the system, reformat its partition, and use it as extra storage space. With 2 (or 3, or 4) HDs in your PC, the combinations of uses becomes awesome. By making one of the HDs removable through use of a removable HD tray, and by making the power to each HD switchable, the ease and flexibility becomes quite amazing. Rant, rant, rant ...... Sure Timmy, sure. Now how about "What can i do to get the data off this drive?" *TimDaniels* |
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Thanks everyone for your suggestions. Was able to determine from the user
that there was no data of significance which saved me a lot of grief. Learned from my mistake though. I should have backed up before beginning any of this. Timothy - see my comments to your reply below. Thanks again. Chris "Timothy Daniels" wrote in message ... wrote: ........ They had a small hard drive with windows xp on it. I wanted to install a newer larger hard drive for them. I installed the newer hard drive without any problems (formatting, install windows, etc). Is the file format on the new HD the same as that of the old HD? Yo know, that could be an issue. Old HD might have been FAT32 and new HD was formatted ntsf. I installed it as master and put the old hard drive, which had a full windows xp install on it and other documents and files, as slave on the secondary ide channel. My intent was to then bring the machine live and copy their documents and other files to the new hard drive then trash the old one. Then what? You'd have files on the new HD, but no installed operating system. Actually did a clean install of windows xp on the new hard drive so intent was just to copy the documents from the old HD to the new one. Windows xp sees both drives. Bios sees both drives. When i click on the D drive in windows it says "disk in drive d is not formatted, do you want to format it now?". I clearly don't as that will lose all the data i am trying to get to. When i go into device manager, under disk drives, it also sees the drive. Under "volumes" there is nothing there so i click "populate" where it shows me the drive capacity. This is where i get a little fuzzy. Partition style says "master boot record (mbr)". Unallocated and reserved space both say 0mb. So, what does all this mean? I actually disconnected the larger new hard drive, set the old one up again as primary and tried to boot, thinking i would still be able to boot to windows since i never touched this drive. Bios recognizes the drive but then says "operating system failed to load" or something like that. Back at square one. What can i do to get the data off this drive? Standard procedure for moving an OS to a new HD is to clone the old HD's entire contents to the new HD using cloning software such as Synantec's Ghost or Acronis' True Image, or a handful of other cloning utilities, or the cloning utility that might have come with the retail package containing the new HD. Check to see if you can download such a utility from the manufacturer's website. When you do the cloning, be sure that the utility knows (or has been told by you) to copy the Master Boot Record to the new HD. If the utility is also to create the new partition on the new HD, tell it to make a "primary" partition and to mark the new partition on the new HD "active". Once the copying has been completed, don't boot up the new HD just yet. First disconnect the old HD's data cable or power cable or both. This isolates the new HD to prevent its new OS from seeing its "parent" when it boots up for the 1st time. Then startup the PC. The BIOS will see that there is only the new HD in the system, and it will pass control to the new HD's MBR, which in turn will pass control to the boot sector on the "active" partition, which will start ntldr there which will look at its boot.ini file.... etc., etc., and the new OS will load and start up. If it were to see its "parent" during its 1st startup, it would set pointers that will forever entangle it with its "parent" and you'd have siamesed OSes. But after the 1st startup in isolation, the new OS becomes an "adult", and subsequent startups with its "parent" visible doesn't affect the new OS. The most common procedure is then to put the new HD in place of the old HD on the IDE cable, and to set the new HD's jumpers to the jumper setting of the old HD (although neither action is really necessary), and use the new HD as you had used the old HD. Note that there is no real role corresponding to "Primary Master" as that designation only determines the default position of the HD in the BIOS's boot order - which can be changed at will during bootup. If you know how to adjust the boot.ini file on the old HD, you can reconnect the old HD, let it boot up, adjust its boot.ini file for multi-booting, and you can choose between the old OS and its files or the new OS and the copied files at boot time. Or, you could exchange the new HD's and the old HD's jumper settings and use the new HD's boot manager and boot.ini file to do the multi-booting. Or, you could remove the old HD and use it as a bootable archive of the system that is now on the new HD. Or, you could leave the old HD in the system, reformat its partition, and use it as extra storage space. With 2 (or 3, or 4) HDs in your PC, the combinations of uses becomes awesome. By making one of the HDs removable through use of a removable HD tray, and by making the power to each HD switchable, the ease and flexibility becomes quite amazing. WOW. This last section is way over my head. What was i getting into? LOL. And here i thought i had some decent knowledge. My experience has really just been in installing new hard drives, no ghosting or imaging, and installing second hard drives for data only. Thanks for the insight though. *TimDaniels* |
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"Cut" wrote:
My experience has really just been in installing new hard drives, no ghosting or imaging, and installing second hard drives for data only. Thanks for the insight though. Once you've acquired 2 or 3 HDs and you've tried cloning, you're hooked on it. You not only don't have to remember which files to copy, but you also have a backup system to use if the primary HD fails. ~Reggie~ |
#9
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"Cut" wrote:
Is the file format on the new HD the same as that of the old HD? Yo know, that could be an issue. Old HD might have been FAT32 and new HD was formatted ntsf. Let us know if that was the cause. We're all learning. |
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