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Problem with my HDD's

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by andrew_mallorie

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I have a question that I hope someone can help me with. My wife and I have 3 computers (2 desktop and 1 laptop) and I want to take her desktop down and integrate it with mine. All I am looking to do is remove her HDD from her tower and install it in mine.

Before I get to my issue here is my towers specs. ( I built this pc like 4 years ago so it's kinda outdated)

ASUS K8V Deluxe MB
AMD Athlon 64 3000 processor
2.5 gigs ddr 3200
1- WD 160 gig 7500 rpm IDE HDD
Radeon 9600 Pro
Windows XP Professional
The rest is probably irrelevant

Her computer was a pc she bought from HP and the HDD that it came with was a 250gig SATA. I took out her HDD and installed it into my tower. My MB is RAID complient but I don't use it so I have tried plugging her HDD into the SATA primary and then tried the secondary and not the Pri/Sec underneath the Raid plugin.

I loaded my bios and I do not have the option of choosing SCSI or adding her HDD into the boot sequence and I don't think I can dual boot the two HDD like you could a multiple partition on one hard drive or am I wrong?

So in my bios under Boot and Boot Priority I have my IDE HDD then one of my IDE DVD drives and third is disabled.

Under Hard Disk Drives I finally have my bios recognizing that there is a SATA HDD installed and listed as the 2nd drive.

I believe I have tried everything that I know and can not get it to operate, even tried pulling up the Boot Selection pop up and selecting her HDD and all it does is tell me that windows failed to initialize last time and it boots my HDD instead.

I apologize for the long post but I am trying to be as descriptive as I can. Any help is greatly appreciated.

4 replies

by thechas

First off, it is problematic at best to move a hard drive with Windows installed to different hardware.

If you are LUCKY, you may be able to boot into safe mode and then be able to boot into Windows normally afterward.

As to getting your ASUS board to recognize the SATA drive, you may end up loosing all of the data on the drive before you can get the SATA controller on the motherboard to address the drive.

Why? Many of the first generation motherboards that included SATA controllers have them configured as RAID controllers. Even if you have just a single drive connected, you still need to initialize it as a RAID array. Of course, doing so may make it impossible to access the data on the drive.

IMHO, you have 2 options.
If all you want to to get the data off of the drive, buy an external drive adapter and install the SATA drive in it.

If you want to use the drive on your system, install a plug-in SATA adapter card.

One last thought, your older motherboard would have a SATA 1 controller, and most PCI SATA controller cards are SATA 1 devices. If the drive you have is a SATA II, you may need to set a jumper on the drive to limit it to SATA 1 transfer rates.

Chas

by oh smeg

It's more a Hardware Issue that may not be possible to resolve easily.

But to see if at least you can read the drive Boot your Computer with your OS and load the SATA Driver that came on the M'Board CD. If there is going to be any problems with initializing a RAID Array you'll know about it very quickly and Stop the Procedure. After you have installed the SATA Driver if there are no RAID Array Issues Open Explorer and see if you can see the SATA Drive and it's contents. If you can you may need to Take Ownership of the Files on the SATA Drive by following these directions.

http://tinyurl.com/3aw7

And save all the Data before doing anything else. You should also Backup all your Data as there are only 2 types of Computer users those who have lost their Data and those who are going to loose their Data. Not a Flippant Comment just a Fact of Life so the more you do now to protect your Data the better that things will be.

If you wife had XP Professional installed you didn't make any mention of this and was using EFS you need to refit the SATA Drive to the HP and Backup the Data without Encryption or you need to backup the Encryption Key by following the directions here.

http://tinyurl.com/3cd8hf

However you would be better Backing up the Data without any form of Encryption as the risk of loosing the Encryption Key or it not working quite right is way too great.

Now if you have reached this stage and have Solid Working Backup you can run the Windows Method for Changing M'Boards which in this case I don't think will work as the SATA Drive here isn't natively supported by the M'Board you are using.

http://tinyurl.com/j9u7

As you have at least 1 copy of a Windows XP Pro OEM Install Disc you can do a In Place Install and load the SATA Drivers by pressing the [b]F6 Key[/b] when the first Blue Screen Appears in the Windows Installer and then inserting a Floppy with the SATA Drivers copied to the Root of a Floppy and waiting to be prompted to load the SATA Drivers. You need to use the M$ OEM Disc not a Makers Recovery Disc as these do not support the In Place Install Option.

http://tinyurl.com/g4bv8

That's the beginning of what you will be facing if everything goes smoothly it can be much worse if you want to have 2 people using the 1 Computer what's wrong with Setting up a Second User Account on one of the computers and coping the Second Users Data & Settings into that Account? It would be easier and faster without any Hardware Issues related to Old Hardware not supporting newer Technology. You could fit the SATA Drive to a USB Enclosure and use that as a Backup Device though you shouldn't leave it running all the time.

Col

by thechas

I just realized that you might be planning to set this system up as a dual boot.

If so, what you are attempting violates the Windows EULA from the HP system.

The copy of Windows that came with the HP system is locked to that computer. This is true for ALL OEM versions of Windows.

If you wish to dual boot your system, you will need to install a different copy of Windows onto the hard drive from the HP system.

Chas

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