Hard Drive Woes

[objecterror]

I think I should know better, but, I have an IDE drive with a clean install of windows xp home edition.

The pc that it went to is currently broken, I pulled the drive, and tried to boot from it on an hp. (just to see) I recieve a disk read error and reboot a few times.

okay.

Second time I boot, the drive comes up in the cmos and windows xp shows that it's formattable. problem is, I don't want to lose the data. If I can get onto the hard drive, (some how) what other options do I have? I figure if I buy an external enclosure it'll be along the same lines.

any help?

 

[[t..o..m]]

A little bit confused. So you have a drive that won't boot, but you want the info off of it?

Just place the drive into a working computer, and the disk will be recognised by windows and you will be able to access it just like any other drive

 

[objecterror]

A little bit confused. So you have a drive that won't boot, but you want the info off of it?

Just place the drive into a working computer, and the disk will be recognised by windows and you will be able to access it just like any other drive

Let me clarify, I'm sorry for anyone reading and scratching there heads .

Well Tom, I have the hard drive with the information I want on it plugged in slave IDE. The computer I'm running it with works fine, but, when I try and access the hard drive with the information I want on it, windows prompts me to first, format the drive which, we all know 'erases' the data off of there so this entire process is completely useless to me.

The hard disk with the information I want on it, has/had an install of windows xp on there. I thought I could boot from it since it was a full install and do it that way, but, the drive isn't formatted from what windows is saying.

 

[Daffney]

when you instal a new hhd (used drive from another pc) as in new to the pc you are currently using, in order to boot to it, your pc needs to format the drive and set-up a partition so it can be accessed (ntfs ; fat 32). that has always been the way to access hard drives.

you can get the information off the drive, but you will want to take it into a geek store if you cannot do it yourself, I have not done that yet and couldn't tell you. can it be done yes, all I am saying is your pc wants to format your drive in order to boot from it at start up.

 

[objecterror]

Yeah, I want to get the info, but after the format I mean. Is there any commands under ms dos that I can use to unmark the files that have been selected to be written over?

 

[ApolloIV]

Well you wont be able to boot to it thats for sure because when you format and install windows on it it will only work for that PC, maybe for another PC that has the same hardware but I'm not sure about that. It's strange that you can't even access it. Did you boot to the OS on the other hdd and go through mycomputer to pull off the files?

 

[objecterror]

Yeah, I know it had to be formatted on another computer, but the problem lies when I boot up in the primary drive. It shows that it's there and I can access it, but, I need to format it. I got the software called get back 3.3, says after I format, I might be able to retrieve some of the data left on the hard drive.