Using Old hard drives as "new" external ones

My old XP Pro hard drive worked just fine when I purchased my new PC and
installed Vista Home Premium on it. The old tower was properly disposed of
(recycled) and I bought an inexpensive I/O Magic external hard drive case to
use the XP drive as a backup but in order for Vista to "use" that old drive
it wants to format the thing (i.e. ERASE EVERYTHING). I've got some
incredibly important documents and things on the old drive and don't want to
lose a bit of it, but I can't even plug it into the new system's mother
board. Is there anyway to get around Vista's formatting requirement to
access the files on the old drive?

 

When you put the drive into the external enclosure, did you remember to
set it as Master? It might have been set to Cable Select before so make
sure.

If the drive is properly jumpered in the case and Vista is still not
seeing the files, then try connecting the drive either directly to an
IDE connector in your new computer temporarily or take it in its
enclosure and connect it to another computer. If the files are seen
then, copy them to the hard drive of your new machine or burn them to
CD/DVD-R.


Malke

 

....

since when does a hard drive running externally via USB need to be set
as a master

 

Since that's required by most external hard drive enclosures. There are
a few that have a different jumper setting (refer to the manual) but all
of mine state that the drive in the external hard drive enclosure must
be set to Master. Hope that clarifies this for you. Obviously this would
not be applicable to a drive enclosure designed for SATA.


Malke

 

That's a normal requirement of every external USB case I've ever seen

 

The instructions for all eight (three different manufacturers) of my external
USB IDE drive enclosures say the drive MUST be jumpered as master.


I Bleed Blue and Gold
GO BEARS!

 

I've jumpered it to every setting possible and still no dice. Perhaps I got
a defective external drive case??

 

Can you try a different USB port, or can you test it on another machine (your
problem might be with the USB port or even the cable)?


I Bleed Blue and Gold
GO BEARS!