installing a non-blank slave drive without losing its data?

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sj-roc
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Okay, so I have a computer issue and thought I'd ask on here for some advice.

I have a SATA hard drive, about five years old (Western Digital model WD2500JS), which until recently was the master (and only) hard drive on my XP desktop. Unfortunately the OS suddenly became corrupted to the point where I couldn't even boot it in any type of safe mode, so I decided to detach it from the desktop and re-install the OS and all my applications onto a new master hard drive.

Now I'd like to re-attach the previous master as a slave without losing its data (the applications I don't mind losing, since I either kept all the CDs or was able to download them again; it's the data they've generated, e.g. spreadsheets, I really want to recover). Has anyone here ever attempted such an operation? Any advice about what and what not to do to avoid losing the data? (I know, I should have had an external backup... lesson learned! :sigh: )

I'm thinking there HAS to be more to this than simply re-attaching the drive to the motherboard and the power supply and booting up. I know some hard drives require attachment of jumpers to allow the MB to distinguish between master and slave drives but that doesn't appear to be the case here; there's a label on the drive casing specifying that "Master/slave jumper not required for SATA".

Any advice appreciated. I've already checked a few places online but most of what I found was older, somewhat outdated discussions and focussed on adding blank slaves where data recovery isn't an issue.
Sports can be a peculiar thing. When partaking in fiction, like a book or movie, we adopt a "Willing Suspension of Disbelief" for enjoyment's sake. There's a similar force at work in sports: "Willing Suspension of Rationality". If you doubt this, listen to any conversation between rival team fans. You even see it among fans of the same team. Fans argue over who's the better QB or goalie, and selectively cite stats that support their views while ignoring those that don't.
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Sir Purrcival
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Generally speaking connecting is all you should have to do. You may want to go into the bios of the computer and confirm that the drive has been recognized.

There will be no jumpers or anything like that to configure.

I have done this literally dozens of times over the years to recover data, scan a suspect drive for virus or hardware issues. and so on.

The only piece of warning I can give you is not to do any diagnostics or formatting before you have gotten your data off (if it allows you access). The OS may prompt you with a message saying something to the effect (Cannot recognize drive would you like to format) but cancel any such requests.
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sj-roc
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Thanks, SP - that gives me a little more confidence in attempting this on my own for the first time. I'm still not clear about the BIOS (hadn't heard of that term before this incident but have from other sources since), maybe will do a little more online digging on that first.
Sports can be a peculiar thing. When partaking in fiction, like a book or movie, we adopt a "Willing Suspension of Disbelief" for enjoyment's sake. There's a similar force at work in sports: "Willing Suspension of Rationality". If you doubt this, listen to any conversation between rival team fans. You even see it among fans of the same team. Fans argue over who's the better QB or goalie, and selectively cite stats that support their views while ignoring those that don't.
sasklionsfan
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Just download a free linux distro like ubuntu, download the livedisk version. Then boot into it and transfer your old files from your old installation onto your new hard drive or an external one you have collected. Windows will probably want to just format your hard drive during the os install. And if you want to setup any new partitions on either internal drive just use the disk utility on the livedisk.
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WestCoastJoe
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On this topic I have a hard drive from an iMac G5 (the main hard drive, the only hard drive on the computer). It stopped booting. It is loaded with stuff I want to check. I removed the hard drive and have kept it. I wonder if it can be read by Windows or Linux? Or a Mac machine?
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Sir Purrcival
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sj-roc wrote:Thanks, SP - that gives me a little more confidence in attempting this on my own for the first time. I'm still not clear about the BIOS (hadn't heard of that term before this incident but have from other sources since), maybe will do a little more online digging on that first.
BIOS (Basic Input Output System).

Basically put, every computer has a small amount of software built right into the computer motherboard. This software allows the user to configure what hardware the computer actually has and other things. For example, does your computer start up with NUMLock turned on or off? That is usually a setting that you can configure in the BIOS. The boot sequence is configured in the BIOS e.g. CDROM First, Hard Drive Second, USB Flash Drive third drive etc. Most of this you don't want to touch but some is pretty straight forward to look at.
You usually get into the bios by hitting the DEL key during start up. It may be different for some name brand computers like Dell, HP and so on. specifics for those computers can be found by searching Google. It is usually something like F10

Windows probably wouldn't read a MAC drive but there are Linux utilities that probably can. A Mac would probably read a connected windows drive.

The other option is that if you don't want to risk making a direct connection to your machine is to buy a Hard Drive enclosure and put your old drive in that and then connect to the computer via USB cable. Your computer will either recognize or not Same goes for a damaged Mac Hard Drive
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sj-roc
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Sir Purrcival wrote:BIOS (Basic Input Output System).

Basically put, every computer has a small amount of software built right into the computer motherboard. This software allows the user to configure what hardware the computer actually has and other things. For example, does your computer start up with NUMLock turned on or off? That is usually a setting that you can configure in the BIOS. The boot sequence is configured in the BIOS e.g. CDROM First, Hard Drive Second, USB Flash Drive third drive etc. Most of this you don't want to touch but some is pretty straight forward to look at.
You usually get into the bios by hitting the DEL key during start up. It may be different for some name brand computers like Dell, HP and so on. specifics for those computers can be found by searching Google. It is usually something like F10

The other option is that if you don't want to risk making a direct connection to your machine is to buy a Hard Drive enclosure and put your old drive in that and then connect to the computer via USB cable. Your computer will either recognize or not Same goes for a damaged Mac Hard Drive
Thanks again for the follow up comments, SP. Actually what you say about the BIOS reminds me now of a comment from someone else before I started this thread but didn't really appreciate at that time. Something to the effect that since my old HD had the OS pre-installed, it's not impossible that some drivers may have been loaded onto that HD, which could thereby hamper accessibility to its data, as opposed to having them on the MB where they'd be isolated from HD fail and life would be easier (although that would certainly sound like bad design). Not sure whether that's relevant to your comment but it just turned on that light bulb for me.

In the meantime I've been talking with my ISP (shaw) tech support because their security software (which is really just OEM McAfee) seems to be frowning on my new XP install. I mentioned in passing my data recovery issue and they offered the same suggestion as you, about isolating that HD with a USB-enabled enclosure rather than a slave-style attachment. Apparently they're only about $10 or so he told me IIRC.
Sports can be a peculiar thing. When partaking in fiction, like a book or movie, we adopt a "Willing Suspension of Disbelief" for enjoyment's sake. There's a similar force at work in sports: "Willing Suspension of Rationality". If you doubt this, listen to any conversation between rival team fans. You even see it among fans of the same team. Fans argue over who's the better QB or goalie, and selectively cite stats that support their views while ignoring those that don't.
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Sir Purrcival
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It is another way to go but their estimate on the price is about $20 to $30 shy at the minimum and you will spend as much time inserting the drive into the enclosure as you would making the connection direct. However, having the enclosure can be handy down the road . Find a good hard drive for it and you have a backup drive, portable drive to carry information easy, what have you.
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sj-roc
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Sir Purrcival wrote:It is another way to go but their estimate on the price is about $20 to $30 shy at the minimum and you will spend as much time inserting the drive into the enclosure as you would making the connection direct. However, having the enclosure can be handy down the road . Find a good hard drive for it and you have a backup drive, portable drive to carry information easy, what have you.
This is a little late in reply, SP, but having subsequently priced enclosures myself, I can see you were right. The laptop versions seemed a little cheaper.

In the end my data restoration project was successful without having to go that route. I'd only disabled the PS/MB connections of my old hard drive, without physically taking it from the tower, so I just re-connected — it installed by itself as a slave on boot up. Almost everything on it was readable pretty much right away, except for My Documents, which denied access. That was solved by a re-boot in safe mood and login as Admin to access and re-assign the security properties. Copied everything over to the new drive, where I could access without admin status. Everything works well with both drives installed so I just left it that way :thup:

So I'm back to pre-crash life once again, a little bit smarter and with triple my old disk space lol. Thanks again for all your helpful comments!
Sports can be a peculiar thing. When partaking in fiction, like a book or movie, we adopt a "Willing Suspension of Disbelief" for enjoyment's sake. There's a similar force at work in sports: "Willing Suspension of Rationality". If you doubt this, listen to any conversation between rival team fans. You even see it among fans of the same team. Fans argue over who's the better QB or goalie, and selectively cite stats that support their views while ignoring those that don't.
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Sir Purrcival
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Good stuff, always provides a level of satisfaction when you "do it yourself" and it all works out.
Tell me how long must a fan be strong? Ans. Always.
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