Installing a new HDD

[Travis Munday]

TIme to tap the talent.



I just installed a new HDD in my mothers computer, it was from her old computer. The new computer runs on XP: Home, the old computer ran on W: 98. The new computer reconizes the disk, but I can't access it, it asks me to format the disk, which I don't want to do because I want to keep the data (which isn't backed up, BTW). Am I SOL and will have to format the drive? Or is there a way to read the drive, remove the needed data with formatting?

 

[Mike S 2]

XP runs on the new NTFS file system, the 98 HDD is formated with FAT32....therefore the XP system sees the hard drive, but cant read it because its written in a diffrent language pretty much. You can format from FAT32 to NTFS without loosing your data, but you cannot format from FAT32 back to NTFS.....so as long as you are never giong to use the old HDD with windows 98 you are safe in formatting it so the new XP system can use the hard drive.

 

[Jacob Dryer]

WinXP can read FAT32 drives



DO NOT FORMAT THE DRIVE, you can still get the data off.



Right click my computer and select manage, then storage, then disk management that will show all drives and partitions on the harddrives that are installed.



You may just need to assign it a drive letter.



The other possibility is that the jumpers are set incorrectly. I have seen windows detect a drive and not be able to access it because of that. So doublecheck to see how your jumpers are set on both drives if they are on the same ide channel.

 

[Mike S 2]

Good call on the jumpers.....didnt even think about that. As far as it being able to read fat32....thats only if the main drive is fat32 as well. Correct me if im wrong but I am pretty sure thats the case.

 

[Jacob Dryer]

Nope winXp will read fat32 with no problems what so ever.



There are limitations on size and according to microsoft it will incorrectly detect filesizes.



winXP will actually allow you format any drive with FAT32.

 

[Todd Z]

Need to make it the slave HDD via the jumpers and double check that the bios sees it...

The 2 different operating systems means squat, I have a win 95 HDD and a win XP drive in my computer right now, I can switch the booting back and fourth so I can play the old 95 based games, that will not run on my win XP.



Then in my computer you should be able to access it....

Todd Z

 

[Travis Munday]

Thanks guys, I'll have to write remember this and see what I can do.



I'm fairly sure the jumpers are set correctly, originally, I had the 'old' drive set to slave, and the 'new' drive was set on "cable select", I wasn't sure which was slave or master on the cable, and I couldn't start the machine up. Changed the jumper on the 'new' drive to master, and everything went fine after that.

 

[Deleted deleted]

I know for a fact that XP will read FAT32 partitions, as I have a 40gb drive setup on my Primary Slave IDE channel that was formatted in FAT32. My main boot drive is a 160gb drive and was formatted with XP's NTFS file system. It can read and write to the 40gb drive just the same as any NTFS partition.

 

[David Torres]

Windows 98 also supported FAT16 so depending on how the original computer was setup the partition from the older disk may be setup as FAT16 (i.e. if the Windows 98 was an upgrade from Windows 95 it's probably a FAT16 partition). FAT16 will be an issue for WindowsXP as it's no longer supported. In that case you would have to boot up the old disk in the old computer and use the convert tool Windows 98 came with to convert the partition from FAT16 to FAT32 before Windows XP would recognize it. Then follow hoaxci5's recommendations.