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General discussion

Do hard drive enclosures require formatting no matter what?

Apr 21, 2006 11:14PM PDT

My 4-year old PC ''died'' recently. The problem was not the hard drive. I have ordered a new PC I expect to get next week sometime. The old PC ran Windows XP Pro SP2.

I took the hard drive out and bought an ''enclosure'' on eBay, one of those devices that turns it into a USB 2.0 External drive. The reason is that when I get the new computer, I want to take off some data (email stored offline, Quicken financial data, etc.) and transfer it to the new PC. Then I want to use this drive as a backup device.

Until I get the new PC, I borrowed an old Win98 SE PC from work that no one uses anymore so I could do basic Web surfing and check email online. I got and put together the enclosure and just as a test connected to this PC. Now if you have Win 2000 or Win XP it recognizes the drive automatically, but with Win98 you have to add included driver software.

I was very surprised to see it say the drive needs to be formatted. I obviously opted not to format it, since I want to get some data off it.

Did it do this because of Win 98 vs. XP? Will I have the same problem when I try to connect it to my new PC? Is this normal for these ''enclosures'', I thought it would just recognize what's on my drive? Please let me know, I really don't want to lose the data on this drive or have to pay $$$$hundreds to some data recovery outfit.

Discussion is locked

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You found the issue.
Apr 21, 2006 11:55PM PDT

Windows 98se can not read a XP NTFS formatted drive.

Next time try it on some XP SP2 machine.

Bob

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I realized after I wrote this it's probably NTFS vs. FAT32
Apr 22, 2006 12:11AM PDT

I thought at first it was a FAT drive (I had originally bought the computer as a Win 98SE machine and upgraded to XP Pro), but then I remembered after posting that I had done the NTFS conversion along the way and that that must be the issue.

Thanks, I feel relieved nonetheless! My new machine is going to be Win XP Home SP2 and I'm going to upgrade it to Pro so it should work then.

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Did you see the white light ? Will u b prepared next time ?
Apr 22, 2006 1:53AM PDT

You should consider this as a near death experience cause if the hard drive had died mechanically ... you'd be shelling out MEGAbucks to recover even part of the data. Spend a few bucks now for the hardware and software to backup your system ...you may not be as lucky next time. It's not a matter of IF...it's just WHEN it will fail again.

VAPCMD

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Thanks, but.....
Apr 22, 2006 6:02AM PDT

You're only half correct. It wasn't my hard drive that died, it was my CMOS AND my Power Supply and it was cheaper to get a new PC especially given the age of the old one (OK I know you could probably buy both of the above for cheaper and fix yourself, but I don't really have the time and a repair shop would be expensive).

I actually do have some things backed up (SOME of my offline emails, and all of my pictures and video), but you're right I really should've had Quicken data, all of my offline emails, etc. backed up somewhere. Once the new computer comes in my intention is to use the external hard drive I created for just this purpose, so in that sense you are dead right (no pun intended) and thanks for the advice.