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General discussion

How can I read old Hard Drive?

Mar 18, 2007 10:45PM PDT

I have a new computer system that I built myself to replace an old one that died. I kept the hard drive from the old system and I need to get some information off of it. In the old system this drive was the master drive.

Is there a way to configure the older drive so that I can read it from my new computer?

Both my old system and my new system have Microsoft XP Pro.

I had installed my old drive in my new system as a slave and changed the jumper on the primary HD from CS to Master.

The system booted fine but the old HD was not listed in Explorer.

I figured that I need to setup the old drive in my Bios. When I when to Secondary Drive (1) and selected AUTO detect, it came back Unknown.

The drive is a Western Digital Drive 120 GB. The bios didn't appear to give me an opportunity to manually specifiy the drive.

Anyone have any ideas?

Thank you!

Sincerely,

Tim

Discussion is locked

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That's not the usual method.
Mar 19, 2007 12:00AM PDT

"I had installed my old drive in my new system as a slave and changed the jumper on the primary HD from CS to Master."

One would do that if they were connecting to some 40 conductor cable such as you might see on secondary channels to CD/DVD drives. But today's machines are almost all 80 conductor and use the newer CS jumpers. Recheck your work and what cables and try again.

Another good method is to use an USB drive housing. People tend to have more success because they won't recall old 40 conductor IDE cable methods and will follow the USB drive enclosure's instructions.

Bob

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Confused...
Mar 19, 2007 12:27AM PDT

Bob,

I thought if you were connecting a additional HD you would use the second IDE connector that exists on the Primary IDE cable coming from the MB? It is labled HDD2 on the cable. The IDE cable is 40 pin.

Or perhaps your comments were more directed at my jumper settings?

Are you also saying that I don't need to do anything with the BIOS?

Thanks for your help.

Kind Regards,
Tim