Hardrive Hlp

S

salemf

New Member
Hi all...
I installed vista 64bit today on a sata harive in my new computer.Now in my old computer i had a 300gb IDE hardrive and i installed this in the new system and it is recognised in vista but says i cant use it before i format it...However i cant do this becasue i have so much data on it...Is there anyway to view it without formatting it?

Thankyou
 

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I use a Ubuntu 8.4 I boot to it and run it to veiw files. Do not install but run from dvd. If you install it it will format your drive and you will loose your data. Linux may not be compatable with all your hardware. The only other option I know of is to put your harddrive back in your old computer and save the info you want to dvd or cd. You need to let the guys here know what your old operating system was and they may have a easyer fix for you.
 

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hi there thanks for the reply...it is connected via ide cable and the jumper is set to slave and the dvdrive on the same ide ribbon is set to master.Im unsure what file system it is in atm. amy old operating system was XP service pack 3 and my current one is vista 64 bit ultimate.

thanks
 

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It's so annoying when that happens...
It can sometimes happen the other way round too, a disk which is readable in Vista is reported as being "raw" in XP, so you get a message saying it has to be formatted to become usable.

Of course it's important to say NO to formatting it.

When it was in XP, was it just an ordinary basic drive, or was it a dynamic drive? Dynamic drives are a bad idea. It's easy to convert a basic drive to dynamic, but you can't convert dynamic to basic without losing all the data. Usually a dynamic drive made in XP can't be read in Vista.
So if that's the problem, you will need to reattach it to the old system and copy all the files from it onto a hard disk which is formatted as an ordinary basic disk, or onto DVDs.

Like usmc_nam_vet suggested, you can sometimes get around this by using Linux from a live CD. If you dowload the Ubuntu installer and burn it to CD, you don't have to actually install it onto the hard disk. Boot the Ubuntu CD and if you are lucky it may be able to read your problem HD. If so you can use Ubuntu's file manager to copy the files from it onto your main internal HD (the one Vista can read).

If this hard disk appears in Vista's device manager without any problems reported, and it also appears in Disk Management (even though it's called "raw") then it's not a problem with the jumpers on the hard disk, and it's not a problem with drivers.

 

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Re: Hardrive Help

hey there...how do you tell if it is dynamic or basic mate? i downloaded ubuntu ran the live cd and when i clicked on the hardrive it came up as unable to mount drive i also havea copy of PC Linux OS 07 should i try that and see if it works????? Under vista it appears fine in device manager and when you double click on computer and the format it is in is under RAW.

What should i do??
 

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Re: Hardrive Help

salemf said:
hey there...how do you tell if it is dynamic or basic mate?
Click to expand...

It's usually shown in Vista's Disk Management, which you can get to through Admin Tools, Computer Management, or just by running diskmgmt.msc. However it's possible that it won't be able to say whether it's a Basic or Dynamic kind of disk if it sees it as being Raw.

If it had been a dynamic disk on your previous PC it was connected to, I guess you would probably have known about it.

salemf said:
i downloaded ubuntu ran the live cd and when i clicked on the hardrive it came up as unable to mount drive i also havea copy of PC Linux OS 07 should i try that and see if it works????? Under vista it appears fine in device manager and when you double click on computer and the format it is in is under RAW.

What should i do??
Click to expand...

The best way would be to reconnect it to the old PC it was in before, and copy the files off it onto another disk or DVDs. If the old PC is no longer available, sorry I don't know what else to try.

I've never had this problem myself, of a hard disk being being wrongly described as not initialised and needing to be formatted. I've seen it reported often enough to know it's a common problem but I'm not aware of any fixes for it, apart from the Linux suggestion which seemed to be worth a try.
 

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  • Manufacturer/Model
    home assembled
    CPU
    Intel Q9450 quad core
    Motherboard
    Asus P5Q Pro, Intel P45 chipset
    Memory
    4GB : 2 x 2GB G.Skill DDR2 800MHz
    Graphics Card(s)
    Gigabyte 9600GT
    Sound Card
    Realtek onboard the mobo
    Monitor(s) Displays
    BenQ 24"
    Screen Resolution
    1920 x 1200
    Hard Drives
    2 of Samsung HD501LJ SATA2 500GB
    and a few IDE hard disks on USB for backups
    PSU
    Corsair TX-650 and APC UPS
    Case
    Antec P180
    Cooling
    OCZ Vendetta2
ok thankyou all for your replies.After trying alot of things i decided to put the hardrive back in to the xp system and oh its not dynamic it is basic and it is NTFS. Now i tried to network the computers and then transfer the date over however i have been trying for the last day i cannot get my xp machine and my new vista machine to see each other at all.i have read eveyrthing on the net and they jsut wnt do it i am reallyfrustrated what should i do?
 

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Copy the data files to DVD is your best option. This will also provide you with a dvd backup of the data which is always handy to have.
You can always try a USB enclosure but this will cost money.
How have you tried to network the two machines together.
There are alot of different ways, I have found the best to use a router wired to the Vista machine.
 

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roy69 said:
Copy the data files to DVD is your best option. This will also provide you with a dvd backup of the data which is always handy to have.
You can always try a USB enclosure but this will cost money.
How have you tried to network the two machines together.
There are alot of different ways, I have found the best to use a router wired to the Vista machine.
Click to expand...

hmm well i havea wireless router which is connected via a ethernet cable to the ethernet port on the xp machine...i then have an ethernet cable connecting the xp machine to the vista machine...Do i need to change the settings in the router mayby???

Can someone possibly post up a link for this kind of setup to network the xp and vsita machines together please.....Im going crazyyy
 

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salemf said:
hmm well i havea wireless router which is connected via a ethernet cable to the ethernet port on the xp machine...i then have an ethernet cable connecting the xp machine to the vista machine...Do i need to change the settings in the router mayby???
Click to expand...

I think you can do it by connecting both computers to the router by ethernet cable, not by connecting them directly to each other.
 

My Computer

System One

  • Manufacturer/Model
    home assembled
    CPU
    Intel Q9450 quad core
    Motherboard
    Asus P5Q Pro, Intel P45 chipset
    Memory
    4GB : 2 x 2GB G.Skill DDR2 800MHz
    Graphics Card(s)
    Gigabyte 9600GT
    Sound Card
    Realtek onboard the mobo
    Monitor(s) Displays
    BenQ 24"
    Screen Resolution
    1920 x 1200
    Hard Drives
    2 of Samsung HD501LJ SATA2 500GB
    and a few IDE hard disks on USB for backups
    PSU
    Corsair TX-650 and APC UPS
    Case
    Antec P180
    Cooling
    OCZ Vendetta2
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