Recognising HDDs

Hey guys, wondering if somebody more technologically minded than I would mind helping me out of a spot of bother...

I've just received a new computer from Dell. In it, is 1 1Tb HDD. My old Dell had 2 500Gb HDDs, which were mirrored across a RAID array. The idea being is that I had a copy of literally every piece of data I owned, so should something go wrong on one HDD, I wouldn't lose everything.

In a bid not to lose everything, I rescued one of the 500Gb HDDs from my departing Dell PC (I got given a free upgrade due to ongoing technical issues involving my original computer) and have stuck it in my new PC.

It's connected via SATA cables, and has a power supply in to it as well, only windows doesn't seem to recognise this new drive. It's quite literally invisible. As one can imagine, this makes retreiving any data one may wish to recover exponentially more difficult.

My old HDD was being run on a 32-bit Vista system, whereas my new system is 64-bit Vista.

Should anyone have any clue, help would be extremely appreciated.

Kenneth

Hello Kenneth,
You seem to know your way around the hardware side so i will take it you have this setup in the bios ok.
Try this, unplug your power lead for about 5 mins, then plug it back in and try it, this has worked before for me.
Good luck and post your results.

i think it needs to be connected to a raid controller and set to "primary master" or "single hard drive, no raid". being 32 bits should not be a problem, but if all your hardware has changed, that could pose some difficulties. did you look for the drive in "disk management" as well as "my computer"? (control panel, admin. tools, computer management, disk management)

Thank you for the replies

RE: s-n - Unfortunately, I think I'm able to talk the talk better than I am walking the walk as they say. I hadn't gotten as far as looking in to the bios, as it's been about 8 years since I built a computer for myself and have had to have a look in there. Much like getting behind the wheel of a car after having spent the last 8 years as a paraplegic - one is naturally hesitant to start the engine.

I have, upon reading your reply, been in to the bios. It was scary at first, but I was able to fight the urge to put a hammer through the monitor and yell "witchcraft" and look at the 'Drives' section. As I have 3 drives already (two disk drives), the old HDD was assigned SATA position 3. As suspected, the drive was turned off. Whoops. Only, upon turning the drive on, and trying to boot - my computer would try to boot from this drive, which is not what I want. Partially because I've been having problems booting from it anyway (Windows refused to load from either 500Gb mirrored drive on my old computer, so I suspect there's a problem with the Windows install) and partially because it's meant to be a slave to my 1Tb HDD with the 64-bit Vista installation.

Even when offered the choice of boot sequence, and manually selecting the 1Tb drive, it still tried to boot from the 500Gb. Personally, I think that's a bit weird. In order to get back in to Windows, I had to turn the 500Gb drive off again.


RE: kword88 - I have indeed looked for the drive in disk management, since your suggestion though. It wasn't there *sadface*, even after a disk rescan. As for a "raid controller", you've lost me. The last computer I built was all IDE-based - that was computing for dummies and even I could get my head around the master/slave system there.

**

I'm still about as lost as a nun in a brothel, but you've both been a big help thus far and hopefully I've elaborated enough to allow you a clearer idea of what's (not) going on with my computer atm.

Further assistance would be highly welcome!

Kenneth

your hdd's had to have been attached to a raid controller originally. you typically access the raid settings the same way as the bios, but with a different key combo. (mine is esc for the bios, and ctrl-F10 for raid). in the event of a hdd failure, you would reboot, hit the key combo at the appropriate time, and change the settings to only boot from the one good drive. you could then replace the bad drive and recreate your raid array. its possible your current computer has raid, and its just disabled in the bios. i think you will still have to boot it as master (since it was set up that way), make the bigger drive the slave, copy all the files you need to the big drive, and then set up your master/slave configuration again. but i doubt your current computer will boot to the old drive, since all the hardware is probably different.
the only other solution i can think of, is to try an external sata enclosure attached to a usb port, or start a new installation of windows (assuming windows setup "sees" both drives) and select the "reinstall" option, so setup will create a "windows.old" folder that you can access later. be sure not to select the "format" option.

Ok, I was hoping I'd be able to make better sense of that post today after some sleep but unfortunately that's just not the case.

From what I can tell, you implied that because of the way the RAID was set up in my old computer, it was possible that it'd have to be this drive that I boot from in my new one, making the 1Tb drive the slave... only this wouldn't work due to the hardware changes that the old drive would be facing.

If it helps at all, I also have a 500Gb external USB drive. I bought this for backing up things from my old computer - before it stopped being able to boot up.

You'll have to go in to a bit more detail about an external sata enclosure I'm afraid, as I'm not entirely sure I follow you there.

I'm looking through all the disks I got from Dell with my computer... I have a Reinstallation DVD for Windows Vista Home Premium 64BIT SP1 (I also found a Microsoft Works disk lol, good times), and that looks like it'll do the trick... I was just hoping there'd be a windows disk around somewhere I could utilize.

So... where do I go from here?

ThermalTake Thermaltake BlacX N0028USU Hard Drive Dock

my thought was that you could use one of these. most newer systems let you rearrange the boot order so you can boot to the usb drive first.

So I could, if I wanted, install windows on to my 500Gb USB HDD... boot from that, and see if windows recognises the 1Tb and the 500Gb internal drive?

Ok, two things went wrong.

Firstly, windows installation didn't recognise the 500Gb internal drive... maybe I need to turn it on in the bios first.

2ndly, Windows refused to install on to a the USB HDD.

I'm terribly sorry... I must be the worst person to help ever.



Edit: I have 2 games installed on the 1Tb HDD... neither are exactly any great loss as I could easily reinstall them both. I'm going to try turning on the internal 500Gb hdd in the bios, then reinstalling windows to the 1Tb. Fingers crossed, eh?

i would disconnect the 1tb drive, make the 500gb the single primary master (in the bios). then, if its recognized, do a reinstallation of windows on it. the installation will create a folder named "windows.old", which will contain all of your files and programs.
do some googling on how to boot to a usb drive. just in case.

Hey kword88.

I went off and embarked on my venture before I had the opportunity to get your last reply, so by the time you were trying to advise me against a potentially ruinous path, I'd already started mashing buttons whilst in the bios.

Just to let you know:

I enabled the 500Gb HDD in the bios, and set the boot order to boot from the CD drive first. By doing this, I was able to start the windows reinstallation. Instead of doing this on the 500Gb drive though, I chose to reinstall Vista on the 1Tb (as I'd only had the new computer a matter of days and there really was nothing to lose).

During the Windows installation, I was able to see every one of my HDD's - so I knew that was a good sign. Upon the completion of the reinstallation, I set up reinstalling all my drivers and so forth and then some basic software (antivirus et al). Once my computer was functioning like it should, I tried copying all my files from the old HDD to the USB 500Gb.

It worked

It took over an hour to transfer everything across, but I was able to get the files I wanted.

Trying to reboot the computer with the still RAID-enabled 500Gb drive was still throwing up problems though, including new symptom: BSOD. I was getting stop code 0x00008086. After a bit of checking around, I think this is indicating that the 500Gb HDD has some bad sectors on it (which would explain why I was having problems booting from it).

I think I'd be fairly content just to throw this old HDD away now I have everything I need from it. I'm not sure how I'd go about overcoming the bad sectors, nor how I'd deactivate any RAID settings the drive clearly still hangs on to.

Last question:

Is the drive worth salvaging?

now that you rescued all your files, you can reformat the two 500 gig drives. then, run a thorough scandisk to find and mark any bad sectors. then you can use them any way you see fit. storage, dual boot, or even another raid array. your system comes with a raid controller.