Computer Hard Drive Question

[Jeffrey Makiel]

My computer that ran XP has quit on me.

I bought a new computer that runs W7.

I also bought a SATA hard drive USB docking port so I can retrieve files from the old hard drive. However, when I hook it up to my new computer, it asks to format the USB drive. Why? Is it because the old hard drive has the old XP operating system on it?

I assume if I say 'yes' to format, I would loose the contents of the old drive?

Any thoughts are appreciated.

-Jeff :)

[Chuck Wintle]

My computer that ran XP has quit on me.

I bought a new computer that runs W7.

I also bought a SATA hard drive USB docking port so I can retrieve files from the old hard drive. However, when I hook it up to my new computer, it asks to format the USB drive. Why? Is it because the old hard drive has the old XP operating system on it?

I assume if I say 'yes' to format, I would loose the contents of the old drive?

Any thoughts are appreciated.

-Jeff :)
Yes If the drive is formatted all will be lost for good. Since it is a sata drive and your new computer must have extra sata ports inside then i would hook it to one of those instead. Then you can easily retrieve your data and whatever else.

[Jerome Hanby]

Something has to be "driving" that usb docking port. Possibly it doesn't understand NTFS and wants to format your drive FAT32. Seems like an archaic idea, but I haven't had any third party device that would read NTFS until I bought a WD TV Live, so you never know. I'd say definitely hook it up directly to an internal SATA port and retrieve your data. If you want the convenience of an external docking station, maybe you can return the USB thing and get an external SATA version. Even if your motherboard lacks an external SATA connection, it should be trivial to set one up.

[Ron Cole]

My computer that ran XP has quit on me.

I assume if I say 'yes' to format, I would loose the contents of the old drive?


Without being there to poke around, it sounds like the MBR is corrupt. It can be recovered, but I'm not not a hardware guy. If the data is valuable, there are recovery services, google will lead you to many of them. If the data is in the "nice to have back" category, then you can download software to attempt the recovery yourself.

Ron

[Bryan Morgan]

My computer that ran XP has quit on me.

I bought a new computer that runs W7.

I also bought a SATA hard drive USB docking port so I can retrieve files from the old hard drive. However, when I hook it up to my new computer, it asks to format the USB drive. Why? Is it because the old hard drive has the old XP operating system on it?

I assume if I say 'yes' to format, I would loose the contents of the old drive?

Any thoughts are appreciated.

-Jeff :)

Windows 7 can read your XP drive. The way you went about it should work just fine. I dual boot and share drives this way on one of my computers.

If you format you will lose your data. Could be that the file system got whacked. Have any idea what file system you were using (NTFS, FAT) ? There are a ton of free utilities for data recovery. Could be your USB device is messed up somehow.

You can put the old HD in the freezer for a few hours and try it again... yes this actually works. Done it many times myself. Just make sure theres no condensation on the circuit board.

[Jeffrey Makiel]

I also installed the old SATA drive inside the new computer alongside the new SATA drive as a second drive. It booted up with W7 as normal. But, it did not read the old drive and wanted to format it.

I then removed the new SATA drive and installed the old SATA drive all by its lonesome and tried to reboot using XP that was on the drive when the old computer quit. It will boot just so far (until I see the XP logo) then defaulted to a blue screen asking if I want to boot in 'safe mode'. However, it would not go any further. I'm assuming that my new machine wants 64 bit, and 32 bit XP just won't do?

Lastly, I hooked the old SATA drive using the docking port again but using the optional eSATA port. No dice.

Nothings easy.

-Jeff :)

[Chuck Wintle]

I also installed the old SATA drive inside the new computer alongside the new SATA drive as a second drive. It booted up with W7 as normal. But, it did not read the old drive and wanted to format it.

I then removed the new SATA drive and installed the old SATA drive all by its lonesome and tried to reboot using XP that was on the drive when the old computer quit. It will boot just so far (until I see the XP logo) then defaulted to a blue screen asking if I want to boot in 'safe mode'. However, it would not go any further. I'm assuming that my new machine wants 64 bit, and 32 bit XP just won't do?

Lastly, I hooked the old SATA drive using the docking port again but using the optional eSATA port. No dice.

Nothings easy.

-Jeff :)
What I would try now is to use a program called Test Disk and rebuild the partition table. That may work for you if you are trying to boot from your new machine. Not sure about the 64 bit requirement(32bit may work). Test disk can be downloaded and used on a floppy or a cd. Boot with the cd or floppy with the drive in question and see what happens.

[Myk Rian]

Look for an IDE connector on the motherboard. Connect it as a slave drive to get the data off it. Set the jumper to Slave or Cable Select.
You could also keep it in the old machine and boot with the install CD. It will give an option to re-write the MBR.
Chances are it won't connect to a SATA connector.

[Chuck Wintle]

I also installed the old SATA drive inside the new computer alongside the new SATA drive as a second drive. It booted up with W7 as normal. But, it did not read the old drive and wanted to format it.

I then removed the new SATA drive and installed the old SATA drive all by its lonesome and tried to reboot using XP that was on the drive when the old computer quit. It will boot just so far (until I see the XP logo) then defaulted to a blue screen asking if I want to boot in 'safe mode'. However, it would not go any further. I'm assuming that my new machine wants 64 bit, and 32 bit XP just won't do?

Lastly, I hooked the old SATA drive using the docking port again but using the optional eSATA port. No dice.

Nothings easy.

-Jeff :)

there is alos a windows based version of test disk which will work when you boot into windows.

[Phil Thien]

What exactly died on the old computer? Was it completely dead? Or was it not booting into Windows?

[Larry Frank]

I had a power problem not to long ago and lost two of the four SATA drives in my XP machine. I also tried using a USB external SATA drive dock. I could read one of them and retrieve the information but not the other one which had been zapped.

The USB external SATA drive docks are a nice way to use bare hard drives to back up data without having to pay the extra for an external drive. I have bought several bare SATA drives at good prices and use them for backups.

[Stephen Tashiro]

I use Linux instead of Windows. However, I notice that if you search on the terms:
Windows 7 external SATA recognize
you get a lot of hits about people who have a similar problem. Some messages say that certain Western Digital drives don't work well with Windos 7. Some say that there are updates to the Windows 7 USB or SATA drivers that fix the problem. Given the variety of opinions, there are a lot of things to try.

It isn't surprising that a computer (old or new) won't boot XP from a hard drive that was used on a different machine. The hardware drivers installed on one machine are usually incompatible with the hardware drivers installed on a different machine. The machines probably have different motherboard chipsets, hard drive controllers, internet cards, video cards etc. It probably isn't a 64 vs 32 bit problem.

[Curt Harms]

but I'd use a USB external enclosure and try a Linux LiveCD disk. The only cost would be a CD & time to download an image, around 700MB. If it sees the bad disk you could copy data off. If not, you're not out much except for time.

Here's one possibility if you want to try it:
http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download
select a location near you and go do something else for a while:).

[Mike Cutler]

Jeff

2 possible solutions.

Pop into a cheap external hard drive enclosure. It should appear as a USB Storage Device. You can remove files, but you won't be able to recover any software completely.

If it doesn't work on your computer, find someone with a Mac and see if they can do it. I've recovered data from friends' PC Hard drives on my Mac for them. I'm assuming it works sometimes because the Mac doesn't recognize any part of the operating system, or programs and doesn't try to run anything.

[Bryan Morgan]

I also installed the old SATA drive inside the new computer alongside the new SATA drive as a second drive. It booted up with W7 as normal. But, it did not read the old drive and wanted to format it.

I then removed the new SATA drive and installed the old SATA drive all by its lonesome and tried to reboot using XP that was on the drive when the old computer quit. It will boot just so far (until I see the XP logo) then defaulted to a blue screen asking if I want to boot in 'safe mode'. However, it would not go any further. I'm assuming that my new machine wants 64 bit, and 32 bit XP just won't do?

Lastly, I hooked the old SATA drive using the docking port again but using the optional eSATA port. No dice.

Nothings easy.

-Jeff :)

64/32 bit doesn't matter in your situation. If you look at your device list with the "broken" drive plugged in, does it show up? If not, its a driver/hardware problem. If it does show, its a file system problem. If it doesn't show with more than one drive plugged in, the second SATA channel could be disabled in your BIOS. To check it, press the key for setup when your computer is first powered on (could be F2, Ins, Del, F10, just watch the screen) and dig through there to make sure all of your SATA channels are enabled. Don't change anything you aren't comfortable with as you could make your computer not boot at all.

You could also try a bootable Linux "live" CD. Download whatever distro you want, burn it, and boot from it and see if both of your drives show up... then just try to copy from old to new.

[Paul Atkins]

In December my old pc with win xp on it would not work. I had a removable HD with XP and another with Win2k. The HD in the case was for files and had no OS on it. The XP disc had all business stuff which was backed up, but Quickbooks would not work with win2k. I then put XP on the win2k disk (and lost all that stuff) and tried to access the 3rd disc. Not recognized at all. Thousands of photos,graphics and stuff all gone it seemed. I got an external SATA to usb enclosure and tried the disc on various computers -no dice. Finally after looking at a bunch of solutions I downloaded 'Getdataback' from Runtime. It let me see if there were files on it and if they were good. Hey, they were there! Seems like the catalog or index had been corrupted by whatever was on XP disc. So I send them 79 bucks and get a code and in minutes I was getting all my files back downloaded to the reformatted XP disc. Whew. Now all I had to do was get them to my Mac. Piece of cake. Empty the disc and make it an external storage for the Mac. All is well. (Oh yea, Quickbooks---- We have a new laptop with win7. Grrr... Time saving devices.