View Pc Hard Drive Contetnts

[patrickstar]

Yesterday I asked the Answerbank community on how to access the hard drives of my old PC (Packard Bell 6810sli running Windows XP) that had died due to varyiing reasons (though important data had been backed up) and I do not want to spend anymore money on it. Keeping it going I now had an external drive caddy that both the drives on the PC fit. The first drive is recognised by my laptop (Windows 7) but I cannot access it. It just asks if I wish to format the drive. The second drive is not being recognised by my laptop. I am probably doing something basically wrong so if anyone else has ideas or can guide me it would be appreciated. I don't want to spend Sunday afternoon washing the car instead to fill my time! Thanks

[hc4361]

Hi, Patrick. Have you followed Buenchico's instructions on how to 'own' the hard drive?

[patrickstar]

I tried but the security option on clicking Properties does not exist.

[hc4361]

To be clear, there are two separate hard drives from your laptop?

[hc4361]

Two hard drives from the old pc, I meant

[patrickstar]

Yes. Two Seagate Barrucada 7200.8 300GB drives. Thanks for any guidance hc4361

[Old_Geezer]

It knows it is there but can not recognise it as already being formatted and holding information. My guess would be either a) the disk is corrupt, which I'd doubt as you could read it on the old PC, or b) there is something wrong with the interface electronics telling the PC this is a non-formatted disk.

Certainly do not re-format it.

It's not something I feel confident to advise on, from a distance. But I wonder if you have a hard drive you aren't fussed about, hanging around you could connect in your caddy instead and see if that works. And whether if you formatted it and copied files to it, it worked ok from there.

[patrickstar]

Thanks Old-Geezer. Certainly won't reformat it. I don not understand why it recognises one drive but not the second. Could it be one has the old operating system on it and the second just the stored data etc? Sadly no spare drive to try and experiment. There is nothing that I know of on the drives the is important but the children wanted to get some old homework etc off of it. Once I can access this data I will back it up then format the drives to use as external storage. Both drives were running without any problems until the day the PC ran out of steam so I can safely say neither drive is corrupt.

[hc4361]

I'm really sorry but I'm stumped.

[bhg481]

I can't remember exactly what I did when I was in your situation. Have you looked at "Computer Management > Device Management". I have a feeling you will be able to see your drive, right-click and there may be an option that looks promising. So long as you don't format it you won't lose the data on it.

[Hypognosis]

Any recollection whether the XP drives were, at any stage of their lives
i) Encrypted
ii) "Compress old files to save space" option selected during disk cleanup

Separate issue: can you remember if they were FAT16 or FAT32?

Your laptop is 32 or 64-bit architecture?

Laptop OS is Windows 7 _________ (fill in the version)

[Hypognosis]

Forgot to mention, for an XP-rea machine, either the HDD cabling arrangement (position 0 and 1) or a dipswitch on one device will control master/slave setup.

I've never used one of these drive caddies and can't advise what changes you have to make when connecting up.

Can both of them be read so long as the 2nd drive is not plugged in?

[bazwillrun]

This is virtually impossible, without actually being with the equipment.

but have you checked the bios drive settings on both the laptop and the Pc.

They may not be seeing whats expected when you plug these drives in with respect to op/sys and booting

[patrickstar]

From memory nothing was encrypted or compressed. Again from memory they were FAT32. PC is dead so caddy is only current source to power n use the 2 different drives. One is recognised by my laptop but cannot be accessed, the second is not being discovered.
Laptop is 64 bit and runs Window 7 Home Premium.
As always thanks for any guidance.

[patrickstar]

I know bazwillrun but hoped to green any trains of thought. Unable to gain access to PC BIOS as the PC will not operate. Worse case scenario I will for,at the first drive and use it for external storage. Still cannot work out why it doesn't see the second drive if it sees the identical first drive but that's life I suppose!

[patrickstar]

Green? Gain!

[bhg481]

The two drives would have had their dip-switches set to declare one to be primary and the other secondary. If they are now being used as external drives they both need to be the same (primary, I think, for use in a caddy). If Primary doesn't work, try Secondary.

[Hypognosis]

I have no idea if it will help bit I found this

http://www.techfleece.com/2011/05/15/how-to-take-ownership-of-files-or-folders-or-an-entire-hard-drive/