Installed second hard drive but need to access files off of old one.

A

AdamJ

Member
I installed a second harddrive last month and used the operating system (XP Pro) which was on the old system in the new harddrive.

I've decided I want to make the old harddrive accessible again, as in being able to boot from it.

Can I purchase another XP Pro DVD and reload it onto the old harddrive even though it has all the original files already loaded?

Thanks,

Adam
 
If the drive is still bootable then just boot into it. If you are wanting to transfer files from it, connect the drive and you should be able to access the drive providing its not broke. I hope I understand your question correctly.
 
Thanks John. I cannot boot into the old drive at all.

The old harddrive does not show at all in the boot sequence in bios. But it does show in the harddrives area. When I change the old drive to boot first in the harddrives area, it will keep rebooting, or if I choose safe mode it will start scrolling mapdrives and stop with a black screen full of mapdrives.

I have numerous excel files I need to access off the old drive. When I click on excel it pops up an error message stating "Microsoft Excel has not been installed for the current user. Please run setup to install the application."

Thoughts?











johnb35 said:
If the drive is still bootable then just boot into it. If you are wanting to transfer files from it, connect the drive and you should be able to access the drive providing its not broke. I hope I understand your question correctly.
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Usually when a hard drive keeps rebooting when Windows is trying to load, it usually means there are errors on the hard drive and would need to be fixed. What brand of hard drive is it?
 
AdamJ said:
I have numerous excel files I need to access off the old drive. When I click on excel it pops up an error message stating "Microsoft Excel has not been installed for the current user. Please run setup to install the application."

Thoughts?
Click to expand...

Can't you just copy those files to the new drive and open Excel to access from there?
 
Hi Paul. I guess I can for a short term solution. But I do want access to the harddrive as needed as it has a ton of stuff on it.

Thanks...
 
AdamJ said:
Hi Paul. I guess I can for a short term solution. But I do want access to the harddrive as needed as it has a ton of stuff on it.

Thanks...
Click to expand...

If the harddrive start to show sign of trouble. You need to copy those files over to a backup drive or any second locations. They can fail anytime. I have 4 hard drives failed last month. there is nothing I can do about it. so backup is the way to go.
 
The old harddrive is actually a new one in which all the data was cloned from the old harddrive. I swapped out the old harddrive and it does the same thing as the new 2nd harddrive.

After booting up, the computer keeps restarting after the windows screen comes up. When I choose safe mode, a bunch of drivers comes up on a black screen and the screen freezes.

So, both the old and new 2nd harddrives (Drive E) are doing the same thing.
John, do you think the post you made concerning repairing the drive will still apply?

Thanks,

Adam
 
If the drive had errors on it and you cloned it, then its possible to have screwed up the new drive as well. Thats why you never clone a drive that doesn't work properly.

The only other thing that comes to mind is that is ahci/raid is coming into play here. If the drive was set up for ahci mode and the pc is in IDE mode or vice versa.
 
AdamJ said:
The old harddrive is actually a new one in which all the data was cloned from the old harddrive. I swapped out the old harddrive and it does the same thing as the new 2nd harddrive.

After booting up, the computer keeps restarting after the windows screen comes up. When I choose safe mode, a bunch of drivers comes up on a black screen and the screen freezes.

So, both the old and new 2nd harddrives (Drive E) are doing the same thing.
John, do you think the post you made concerning repairing the drive will still apply?

Thanks,

Adam
Click to expand...

You keeping say drive E: so who is drive C:? Do you have another boot disk there with this second hard drive?
 
Alternative Solution:
1) Download SystemRescueCD ( http://sourceforge.net/projects/systemrescuecd/files/sysresccd-x86/2.3.0/ )
2) Download Puppy 5.2.8 ( http://iso.linuxquestions.org/puppy-linux/puppy-linux-5.2.8/ )
3) Burn both to separate CDs at no moe than 8X using ImgBurn ( http://download.cnet.com/ImgBurn/3000-2646_4-10847481.html )
4) Change BIOS Boot Order to boot to CDrom first
5) Boot to Puppy and mount the hard drive where data to be saved resides
6) Move data from one hard drive to the other after first mounting both in Puppy
7) Reboot the computer, halting at the BIOS with 'delete' key or other
8) Replace Puppy liveCD with SysRescCD 2.3.0 liveCD and boot to it
9) Hit 'Enter' key twice or until page with multi-colored prompt asking User to type either 'startx' or 'wizard' in on screen; enter the desired 'startx' command
10) At the yellow-colored terminal window which appears type in 'gparted' and hit Enter -- delete all partitons on hard drive just emptied of data desired.

When the above 10 Steps are finished, disconnect the hdd with data to be saved &
At the yellow-colored terminal window, either a) use the command
PHP: 
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=4096 conv=notrunc,sync
or b) use DBAN from SysRescCD by hitting F2 at the second prompt encountered on bootup and choosing it -- either will wipe the hard drive completely with zeros, elimninating any viruses, malware, bots, or spyware along with the file system. Using gparted, partition and format for a dual-boot setup, mollifying the need to do this again in the future.

Cheers!

PS Suggest using Ubuntu Malware Removal Toolkit on first hdd since a corrupted OS was cloned
 
Last edited:
AdamJ said:
Western Digital
Click to expand...

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!! :D:D:D


johnb35 said:
Thats why you never clone a drive that doesn't work properly.
Click to expand...

Exactly!

Ok do this:

-Take your old HDD out...
-Make a clean XP install on your new drive and be sure it is C:
-After XP is installed,plug your old HDD on the USB using the appropriate USB cable wether it is IDE or SATA and copy ALL the data from your old hard drive to your new HDD...

NOTE: If your old HDD has viruses,it is a good chance that viruses will be copied too or they might even automatically copy themselves automatically!In that case be sure that a good antivirus software is installed,updated,configured properly and turned ON on your new HDD BEFORE EVEN CONNECTING THE OLD HDD!

You can also use Ubuntu to copy the data from your old HDD to your new HDD...Still be aware of the viruses...




Cheers!
 
Paul, Drive C: is the primary (master) harddrive and drive E: is the secondary drive.

Thanks for the tips guys, I'll give them a shot in the next couple of days.

Really appreciate everyone taking time to post. :)

Adam
 
Paul, how do I tell if the drive was set up as achi or ide mode and what mode the PC is in? I've googled it and I cannot find anything detailing how to check???

Also, I ran Belarc Advisor and it states:

Local Drive Volumes new – volume encryption

c: (NTFS on drive 1) * 500.10 GB 472.17 GB free
e: (FAT32 on drive 0) 499.98 GB 364.91 GB free
f: (NTFS on drive 2) 160.04 GB 98.23 GB free

* Operating System is installed on c:

I apologize for being a pain, but this stuff is a overwhelming to me. I don't understand whey drive e: does not show as having an operating system on it.

Also, could a conflict be due to the fact drive c: is NTFS and e: is FAT32?

Thanks.....


johnb35 said:
If the drive had errors on it and you cloned it, then its possible to have screwed up the new drive as well. Thats why you never clone a drive that doesn't work properly.

The only other thing that comes to mind is that is ahci/raid is coming into play here. If the drive was set up for ahci mode and the pc is in IDE mode or vice versa.
Click to expand...
 
The bios should tell you that. I still don't quite understand what you want.
please help me to understand.
1. You said you changed the hard drive that you want to access he files in the old drive. does the new drive work properly without the old drive?

2. Are you try to boot from the two drives? one at a time?

3. I see you have 3 drives in the last post, why so?

Regards.
 
Hi Paul,

paulcheung said:
The bios should tell you that. I still don't quite understand what you want.
please help me to understand.
1. You said you changed the hard drive that you want to access he files in the old drive. does the new drive work properly without the old drive?

The new drive, which is the primary master drive works fine.

I can access all the files off of the old drive, which is actually a new drive, but a clone of the old drive.


2. Are you try to boot from the two drives? one at a time?

I was hoping I could occasionally boot from the old drive.


3. I see you have 3 drives in the last post, why so?

One of the drives is an external drive for weekly backups utilizing Acronis True Image Home.

Thanks,

Adam

Regards.
Click to expand...
 
If the master drive is working fine and have all the old files, You would be fine. If you want to have an additional copy of the drive, you should format the second drive if it is the same size like the master drive, then clone the master drive to the old one. there you will be able to boot from two different drive one at a time.
Regards
 
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