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SATA Drive partially recognised by Windows

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by cornishfairing

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I'm currently moving to another Windows XP desktop with a better spec on a different AD domain.

My current internal Samsung SATA 500GB drive works fine as one big 500GB drive and currently NTFS.

Plugging the drive into the new Windows XP desktop on a new domain, Windows XP recognises the SATA drive but only the free space. It then gives me the option to format the free space. Does anyone know how I can get the new Windows to recognise the entire drive?

Plugging the SATA drive back in to the old XP machine and it still works as usual.

many thanks,

cornish

7 replies

by Former member

Windows has a transfer wizard where you are able to transfer all (or nearly all) your files. The best way is to get another hdd, Install the operating system on the new hdd and then transfer all your files over. Once you have done this you can then (PLEASE MAKE A BACKUP FIRST) format the big hdd then do a clone of your new hdd onto your big hdd.
Please post back if you have any more questions or problems.

by tintoman

When Windows is installed it becomes hardware dependant, therefore you cannot intercgange the hard drive with another machine unless the new machine is identical to the old one. You will need to boot your new machine from the windows installation cd and select the option to repair the existing installation, no doubt you will also need to install the SATA drivers during windows setup by pressing the F6 key.
I have done this several times and more often than not it works fine, however you will to input the license key for your copy of windows and you might need to call Microsoft to activate windows again.

by cornishfairing

Sorry I should have been clearer earlier. Both my old desktop and my new one are identical HP machines. On the new desktop, I have already installed Windows XP onto the 40GB drive it comes with.

XP boots up fine so I shut down XP. Now I plug the SATA drive in to the new desktop as an extra drive, using the SATA port on the motherboard and power supply keeping the existing drive too.

On startup, press F1 to save that the system recognizes the 500GB drive, and XP boots as normal.

Windows can already see the SATA drive so maybe it doesn't need the drivers?

by tintoman

Sorry I completely misunderstood your problem, can you see the additional drive in "my computer"? if it doesn't show there then maybe if you go to the disk management console Start> Control panel> Administrative tools> computer management> disk management, your disk will be shown there as a foreign disk which you will have the option to import. hope thats a better answer!

by mayhem1969

Did you just install XP on new machine? If so, what version? Is it the same version as the one on the old machine? Is it fully updated. I understand that XP has issues with SATA drives due to the lack of ACHI or Raid drivers. You mention pressing F1 and the system recognizes it and XP boots as normal. I am assuming you mean the Bios recognizes it, which is not the same as XP recognizing it.

It seems to me that XP is recognizing it as a new drive "without" an existing partition and is asking you to partition the remaining space. That is why you do not see the entire disk drive. So while it may be recognizing it to some extent it isn't recognizing it as an existing drive.

by cornishfairing

Thanks for the posts. Much appreciated.

Installing XP SP2 fixed it. My bad. After installing SP2 and restarting, XP recognizes the drive straight away and then says something like "The system has installed software that it needs to read your drive. You need to restart".

Bingo bango, job done. Thanks again,

Cornish.

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