Problem transferring hd from old PC to new PC

[stevem78]

I've just bought a new PC and installed Windows XP - all working fine with a Maxtor external drive also installed and connected via USB/Firewire.

I needed to get the data from the 80gb Samsung HD installed as a second drive in my previous computer. I decided it would be easiest to just take this out of the old computer and put it in the new one.

It was hard getting the Samsung HD into the new PC because of the cables layout - it doesn't fit fully in the bay either but in my experience they never do. I think I managed to get it connected without damaging it (cutting my finger in the process, bah) but I had to swap the two spare connectors around so that the one previously connected to the pre-installed master drive was now connected to the slave.

When I turned the new PC back on it listed the Samsung drive as the Primary Slave so I figured all would be cool. But Windows XP failed to boot and the PC just seemed to stall after getting past the initial Windows startup/loading screen.

I managed to get XP to boot by resetting the PC, going into Setup and changing the setting for the Samsung drive from Auto to None.

Problem is now I don't know how to get XP to recognise the drive properly. Windows lists it as D: (previously this was the DVD-ROM, which is now E - E was previously the Maxtor external drive!) but says 'this drive is not formatted. do you want to format it now?'

Any idea how I can get XP to recognise this drive properly AND retain the data on it (it was practically full with mp3s, images, video)? Thanks for any help.

 

[stevem78]

update

I took out the slave drive and replaced it with another. This drive in now is actually the one I originally intended to use. The previous slave drive had been a master drive before - perhaps this was a problem. The new slave drive had been the slave on my previous PC.

XP now boots fine with this new slave drive BUT there's no icon for it on Windows under My Computer despite the Device Manager seeing it and claiming it is working properly and the driver is up to date. How can I get the drive to appear so that I can access the data on it?

 

[tdeg]

Some questions.

Samsung Drive
Can you install the Samsung on the secondary IDE channel? I've had issues like this before and that seems to help.

New Slave
To get the the new slave to show up in Windows, right click on My Computer and select manage. This will bring up the computer management screen. On the left hand side, select Disk Management. At the bottom it will show your drives. You can change drive letters from here if you want so they are back to what they were. I would do this as changing drive letters after installing Windows can cause some kaka. If one of the drives shows up as unconfigured (or something like that), you can write an XP signature to it by right clicking on it and select write signature (or something like that). When you click on Disk Management you may also get a wizard window to step you through it. After you write the signature, you will need to configure a partition.

Anyways, some ideas (maybe).

Another way to possibly transfer your data from your Samsung to your new computer is to boot with Knoppix and transfer from within there. If that will work or not depends on if you use NTFS and a few other factors.