Need help before it is too late! - Moving to new hard drive

T

The_Dominion

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jul 6, 2001
Messages
337
I posted earlier about how my hard drive had died, well it hasn't quite yet. I was able to reboot, but I fear it may die permanetly soon. I have everything backed up on my second hard drive, but I have NO PARTITION on that drive. It is just a partitionless drive, but with 40GB of data on it. Is there any way to move XP onto this drive, and make it work, before it is too late, and this hard drive craps out on me?
 
Umm explain to me how you copied files to a partitionless drive. Thats just not possible. The Partition determines how data will be stored on the drive itself and sets up such important things (used for storing and recovering data) as the MAster Boot Record and Master Boot Table. Without these things, there is no way anything copied data to that hard drive. Heck, Windows wouldn't even recognize an unpartitioned drive in a computer system. I think what you are meaning to say is you have a drive with stuff on it, but it has no Operating System installed to boot off of it. Assuming that my above assumption about what you really mean is correct, do the following, Grab or buy another HD with free space on it (preferrably at least 40gigs free space). Install windows on it, boot from it, and then after its been set up with the Operating system on whatever computer you are using, Turn everything off and install the Ailing drive as the Slave drive (make sure you reset the jumpers on that hard drive so it doesn't try to be master cause that will just cause a problem in bios). After you install it, turn on your computer again and boot from the fresh new drive, then it should recognize your old ailing drive and from there you can grab whatever data is left from the old drive and stick it on the new one. Or if you have a ghosting utility, you could even ghost it over to another drive or something if thats what you wanted to do.
 
Hey, don't look at me, thought I remember making a partition for this drive, but I am going with what the repartition software said about it. The other problem is I don't want to spend $60+ hard drive, just to put windows on, and then only use for 3 months, at that time I will be making myself a whole new computer, with SATA.
 
Most likely the lack of any partition showing up is related to the recent failure of your drive. It is possible to recover some data (hopefully) from said drive, but you'll need to get a partition repair/recovery program. this one seems to have some features you'll be needing, but I don't think its free at all. A search came up with these links, perhaps one of them will be free and capable of pulling data from your drive. In any event, you won't be able to install windows on the damaged drive and then recover data from its partition (installing windows on the damaged drive is guaranteed to destroy data from the previously damaged partition and could possibly make any data recovery impossible. What you need to do is get another hard drive of some kind (if you don't have a 40+ gigger laying around, grab whatever you have and do what I said in the above post. Perhaps you can use the partition repair software to recover some of the damaged files from that harddrive, then you can copy it to the good harddrive, and finally burn it onto CD's so you can copy more from the bad hard drive to the good one.
 
Maybe I didn't state myself clearly, I have one 80GB hard drive, that works perfectly, and a 30GB hard drive that is on it's last legs. Windows XP Home edition is on the 30GB hard drive. All my games, movies, mp3's documents are on the 80GB hard drive. Problem is, according to the partition software, there is no partition on the 80GB hard drive. I KNOW there has to be, that is why I said it, like I did, I was hoping someone could explain why it said there was none. Anyway, this partition software doesn't want to resize the 80GB hard drive, to where I could have a blank space to put Windows XP home, back on. Because of this, I want to know if there is any way, to just, 'drag-and-drop' the windows onto the currently exsisting, one partition, on my 80GB hard drive. Because deleting all my data is not an option. So can I somehow or another put my current XP onto my 80GB hard drive, and have it work?
 
so what you are saying is (and btw thanks for mentioning we are dealing with 2 HD's what size they are respectively and clarifying which one is dying and whats happening with the 2nd since I can't imagine divining all those details from the first post in this thread) that your 30gig HD is dying but still boots? that your 80gig HD isn't showing to have a partition on it by whatever partition software you are using? and that you need to somehow get a windows OS onto the 40 gig HD. First off, can you still boot from the 30gig dying drive? and if/when you do this can you access the info on the 80 gig hd?
There is no way to drag and drop windows onto the 80 gig HD, but perhaps there is another work around. At least if you can access the data on the 80 gig when you boot of the 30 gig we know its still there and accessible. With regard to your partitioning software that you are using? is it something akin to a Win95/98 boot disk using Fdisk? --they can't recognize NTFS partitions which might explain why you can't mess with the partition on that drive. I don't know for sure about Windows XP installation CD, but if you try running it, try to get it to install to the 80gig HD without doing anything to any partitions or formatting anything (it will tell you in the explanation what the next step of the installation process will do so if it wants to format or partition the drive, you can just cancel it.) If the Win XP installation CD detects there is no partition on the 80 gig HD, then my suggestion is to run a partition recovery tool of some sort and see if you can get back anything from that drive --- To be honest I don't think your partition is damaged on the 80gig drive I just think you were running a boot OS that doesn't have the drivers to recognize an NTFS partition.
 
OK, well the 80GB hard drive, is FAT32. I can't remember the exact details at the moment, but when I added the 80GB hard drive, it wanted it on FAT32, the same as the 30GB hard drive. Yes, the 30GB boots, for now. But it has had a Primary Disk Failure, as well as locking up on me before I ever had that error. In fact I was positive the 30GB was dead, because I couldn't even get the machine to start until I removed it. Later, I figured, why not, lets try and use it again, and it booted. However I do not want to leave that computer on for long, for fear it will die permanetly. I was aware, you can't just drag and drop XP, but I wanted to explain that I want just want to move my Windows, on my 80GB hard drive.

I found this free trial partitioner that will actually do something, Acronis PartitionExpert Demo. Now on my laptop, it is fine with resizing partitions, but on my other computer, the one dieing, it doesn't want to resize either my 30GB, or my 80GB drive. On my 80GB I have 30gigabytes of free space. I also defragged all of that data on my 80GB hard drive, in the hope it would allow me to resize the partitons. It even reads my drive as having NO PARTITION on my dieing computer.

Someone may let me use their Partition Magic 8 on Monday, but I don't think that has any more hope of working than this
 
if you had a bad defrag experience (and I'm not sure that was the case) its possible the partition could have been damaged. Did you use the windows generic defragger or something else? Personally I leave defragging to Diskeeper, but you have to pay for it after the trial period -- but thats another story. Anyway, Partition magic is probably a good place to start, I can't remember for sure if it can recover damaged partitions or not and that is what it sounds like you have with your 80 gig'er. With regard to your friend, perhaps he will allow you to use his computer instead of yours (since his boot HD isn't on the brink of death and that might make things easier and certainly more stable for you to attempt to recover the 80 gig drive and data therein. You might be in luck as I was trying to help another friend recover some files that mysteriously dissappeared from her computer today. And when I went searching for some tools to do this I happened across some freeware that looks like it might do the trick for you. Bonus of this is you don't have to pay for the software, so for information, here's the site, and here are links to downloads for PCI_Filerecover.exe which claims to be able to "Finds partitions for Fat 12/16/32 automatically, even if the boot sector or FAT has been erased or damaged". In fact looking at thier site a little more in depth now that I have time to browse I have to hand it to these guys in that it looks like they got quite a collection of useful data recovery tools for download free to anyone and thats apparently thanks to these guys at CONVAR – Die Datenretter who are sponsoring the whole line up. Its like Open Source for windows or something. Yea so anyway check them out at thier website cause I just spied another program you might like to use for copying anything from your 30gig drive called Clone MAxx-- seems it can do that task. BTW I did a test run of File Recovery program (the one linked to in the download) and it pulled up a bunch of old (meant to be deleted) files I had on another partition, so I know it can accomplish some data recovery with ease. Of course I don't have any need of those previously deleted files, but at least I know it works.
 
Well thanks for the help CVNet, but none of those programs will help me at the moment, since my drive is not dead yet, and I am pretty sure that when it dies, it will be because mechanical failure. I will see if Partition Magic 8 works or not, but if not my only recourse will be to either buy another drive, or attempt to scavenge my linux box for it's 3GB hard drive, or buy a new one. Thanks again.
 
what does diskmanagment (in the OS install 30GB) say when it looks at the 60?

Start > Run > (type) diskmgmt.msc

it recognizes the 2nd drive, but its
unallocated space
strange filesystem
assigned a letter
 
I will get back to you on that, I have not turned that computer back on, and I won't until I have partition magic or some alternative. I am afraid the more I use it, the less likely it will start again.
 
1. Identify the corruption problem on the 80
2. Fix it
3. Resize and move the partition back
4. Clone the old partition (30)


As mentioned the ideal solution would be to employ another computer to conduct 1 thru 3

The "recovery" applications mentioned above will not "repair" the 80, nor will partition magic

if you can use freeware to recover the data and store it elswhere thats all fine and good (a friends HDD or CD-R, then clone and add the data back)
otherwise you need to actually repair the problem, before you can proceed

http://www.ntfs.com/ > Review > The Fat File System

Consider > http://www.diydatarecovery.nl/~tkuurstra/DiskPatch.htm
there are freeware alternatives, but they assume you know what your doing, and are thus fairly dangerous, if you consider Disk Patch as an investment....
 
If I am going to spend any money, I might as well buy that 40GB drive I saw for $20 after rebates, it is cheaper than all the software out there.
 
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