retrieve data from second disk

J

jdonalds

New Member
My desktop died. I bought a new system. New system has one SATA drive with Vista 64 installed. Old hard drive from old system has XP 32 installed and is an IDE drive. I purchased an adapter cable so I can physically connect the IDE drive to a SATA input on the motherboard. So far so good.

All I really want to do is copy my data (photos, music, personal files) from the old 200GB IDE onto the new SATA drive. However...

1) If I boot up with both drives installed the system hangs at boot time. Apparently the BIOS sees two operating systems and doesn't know what to do. If I then disconnect the IDE drive and try to reboot from the Vista/SATA the only way I can get the system to work is to run repair (HP system) and restore to a previous snapshot.

2) If I disconnect the SATA and boot the old XP it works sort of; that is Windows (32) comes up but does not have drivers for much of the stuff in this new computer so I can't do much. The CD drive works but not the ethernet so I can't copy to my NAS drive. Once I've booted from the IDE and switch back to only the SATA I have to load a restore point.

So I can't figure out how to simply boot up Vista from the SATA drive, then copy files from the old IDE.

Here are a couple of details:
o The BIOS was set to RAID and I had to switch it to IDE to get the IDE drive to work at all.
o I don't know where to set the jumper on the IDE drive. Certainly not "cable select" but I've also tried "master" and no jumper.
o I don't have install disks for Vista. A restore image (wipe everything on the partition and return to factory fresh) is on the SATA drive. I can, and I will, make a DVD with the restore image.


I'm stuck and would appreciate inputs.

Thanks,
John (new member)
 
Last edited:
Did you set up your Jumper properly.

I'm not sure about SATA drives - but IDE drives have a bunch of pins next to the IDE pins - before you get to the Molex female plug.

All the IDE drives I've seen have a Jumper or 2 ( small 2 pin connector) that comes with the HDD - and you can use a tweezer to remove the jumper and relocate it within the available pins. The HDD should have a label on the top that tells you where to place the jumper for each drive configuration ( Master - Slave - Cable ).

Did you set the drive you want to boot as the Master Drive. I just installed a HDD today - and reading up on Master / Slave drives - they were describing a problem similar to yours if you don't set up a Master as your primary drive.

That "could" be the source of your problem.
 
Jamin43 said:
Did you set up your Jumper properly.

I'm not sure about SATA drives - but IDE drives have a bunch of pins next to the IDE pins - before you get to the Molex female plug.

All the IDE drives I've seen have a Jumper or 2 ( small 2 pin connector) that comes with the HDD - and you can use a tweezer to remove the jumper and relocate it within the available pins. The HDD should have a label on the top that tells you where to place the jumper for each drive configuration ( Master - Slave - Cable ).

Did you set the drive you want to boot as the Master Drive. I just installed a HDD today - and reading up on Master / Slave drives - they were describing a problem similar to yours if you don't set up a Master as your primary drive.

That "could" be the source of your problem.
Click to expand...
Thanks jamin43, I did try the jumper in position 1 (master) and removed (slave) on the IDE drive. SATA drives don't have jumpers.

I believe in either case the system sees the two operating systems and is just lost after that. Apparently there is some data stored in the bios indicating which disk contains the OS but it gets corrupted.

There is apprently no "master" or "slave" in the SATA system.

John
 
You said your new computer is setup in raid and you switched it to IDE? You need to switch it back as thats why you can't boot up normally. Does your motherboard have an IDE connection on the mothboard, most do? I would just connect using the IDE cable and forget about the adapter. Go into your bios after connecting the old drive and make sure the boot options still say your raid setup for first boot device because normally when an ide drive is found in a sata system it will change to ide drive for first boot device.
 
johnb35 said:
You said your new computer is setup in raid and you switched it to IDE? You need to switch it back as thats why you can't boot up normally. Does your motherboard have an IDE connection on the mothboard, most do? I would just connect using the IDE cable and forget about the adapter. Go into your bios after connecting the old drive and make sure the boot options still say your raid setup for first boot device because normally when an ide drive is found in a sata system it will change to ide drive for first boot device.
Click to expand...

Johnb35,
Thanks for the input. I really don't understand the RAID/IDE switch so I accept your input and will give it a try.

No IDE buss connector on this motherboard; it does however have a floppy connector - go figure.

The BIOS seems to allow me to select a boot sequence in terms of groups such as the CDROM group and Hard Disk group but after that it doesn't allow me to select one or the other hard disk so this may be a stumbling point.

Is there a way for me to boot up using ubunto from a CD, then disable the XP on the IDE drive so the computer won't see two operating systems?

Thanks,
John
 
The only way the computer will see 2 operating system is if you have a dual boot system. If you just take a drive out of an older system and put it in that one then it shouldn't see another os, because the dual boot info would have be on the first drive anyway, which in your case, its not. Most newer motherboards have the option of what group to boot to but then it also has the option of which hard drive to boot to when you have more than one. I know mine does.
 
Solution:

No matter what I tried I couldn't get the setup I had to work. Anytime the two disks were installed and cabled I could not get to the BIOS so I couldn't select the boot sequence. I finally gave up and went to Fry's Electronics where I purchased a Sabrent 3.5" IDE Hard Drive to USB 2.0 Enclosure for $24. As soon as I plugged that into the USB port I had access to the files and was able to begin a copy from the IDE to the SATA drive. From this point I will have a safe copy of all my recent data and can begin the next task which is to create a dual boot system with Vista on the SATA and XP on the IDE.

From what I've read (never did this before) I will load a fresh XP first on the IDE, then load a fresh copy of Vista on the SATA in that order. Then I should have a dual boot system. I want dual boot because I know I will have some software that won't run on the 64 bit system, and some that won't run on Vista.

I hope Windows 7 will be better.

Thanks for your help.

John
 
If your system is SATA based then it might be a little easier if you just get another SATA hard drive instead of using the IDE.
 
Windows 7 will have an XP mode to encourage businesses to switch to 7. Hopefully this will clear up a load of the problems with the compatibility of old programs, although I've never had too many issues and I have applications originally produced for Windows NT4 running on Vista.
 
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