second hard problems 1

[jags22]

I installed a new WD 80 g HD onto my computer. My old drive, a Quantum Fireball 20g, was giving me some problems (wouldn't always boot, very slow, and showing bad sectors) so I thought before it went down, I would transfer some important files to the new HD. I made the new HD the master and formatted it using the same OS(XP) as the old HD which is now the slave. The new HD is running great and my old HD is being recognized in the BIOS with all the appropriate info. But whenever I try to go into the old HD, it gives me a message that it needs to be formatted. I don't know a lot about hardware but I am pretty sure if I format it, I will lose all my data.
Some of you are probably wondering if the old HD is NTFS or Fat32 and to tell the truth, I don't know.
My questions are:
1) How can I tell what my old HD is using NTFS or FAT32?
2) What else should I try to get to my data on the old HD?
3) Is something like Gibson's SpinRite going to work for me? I don't really want to pay for it if it isn't going to help.
4) Are there any other products that might work?
Any help would be appreciated.
P.S. The drive is not being recognized in the Disk Management part of Windows XP. Also, my old HD was originally formatted using Win ME but about 6 months ago I upgraded to XP, don't know if this matters.
Thanks again.

 

[techkiwi]

All I can tell you is that Windows ME uses FAT 32 but I think XP is NTFS.

 

[1101001100110101]

NTFS can read Fat32 drives so that should not be your problem anyway. It could be that the other drive although it is detected may be to corrupted and is not reading correctly.

 

[wolluf]

Can you still boot from the old drive? If so, you can do the backup 'in reverse'.

If its fat32 (it would have been with ME - and unless you converted it to NTFS during/after the upgrade, it still will be. If it is, you could try booting machine from a win98 or ME boot floppy (

http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm

if you need one) and see if you can access it from there (if your new drive is ntfs, which I suspect it will be if its one partition of 80G, you won't be able to actually copy to it from here - but it will give you an idea if the drive is ok or not. If it is - I'd suggest disconnecting the old drive - boot XP so it knows its not there - then reconnect & let XP detect it again - it may do a better job this time!

Apart from problems with drive, XP has a habit of 'not seeing' some partitions created by other installations

 

[Freestone]

Did you ever use a program called GoBack on the old drive? If so, it needs to be reinstalled in order for XP to recognize the older drive's partition.

 

[jags22]

Thanks for the suggestions,
I have never used GoBack and I have gotten it to recognize the drive which is F: (FAT32) after booting from my C: (NTFS) through a dos prompt. I did a chkdsk and it tells me the volume is corrupted. When I try to see any of the old files and such it gives me the

Volume in drive F has no label.
Volume Serial Number is 0000-0000

I don't really know what this means and when I google it haven't had much luck.

Does this mean my data is gone? Or do I still have a chance to retrieve it?

Also, don't know if this helps but I never partitioned the old drive.

Thanks again for all your help.

 

[wolluf]

someone must have partitioned it if it had an operating system on it.

I don't understand 'after booting from my C: (NTFS) through a dos prompt.' - do you mean you ran a command prompt in XP? (XP doesn't have dos).

Have you tried any of my suggestions - booting from win98 boot floppy and try to access it from real dos? Booting machine from old drive?

You may need a data recovery app to get at your data.

 

[jags22]

I have tried booting from the old drive and it goes in a loop between screens telling me which mode to start the operating system i.e. Safe Mode, Last Configured or starting Windows Normally. I have tried every mode and always flashes to a blue screen and then comes back to this page.
I also tried with a dos from bootdisk and it gives me the same message as when I go from a cmd prompt using the new drive. ie Volume in drive F has no label.
Volume Serial Number is 0000-0000
Now I know why I stick to developing applications and don't mess with hardware.
Can you recommend any good recovery apps? I was going to try Steve Gibson's SpinRite 5.0 but it cost around $100 and if it is going to work it would be useless, especially since my new drive is going to be ntfs.
I know I should have backed up all my pictures and personal data but hindsight is 20/20.
Thanks again for your help.
P.S. When I said it wasn't partitioned I meant I hadn't changed any of the partitions from when Dell sent me the computer 2 years ago. All I have done to the old drive as from a system point of is change from Me to XP. Sorry if I explained that wrong.

 

[wolluf]

If its still fat32, then this free app might work:-

http://www.pcinspector.de/file_recovery/UK/welcome.htm

Couple of other commercial ones recommended by other tek tips users:-

http://www.runtime.org/gdb.htm

http://www.webattack.com/get/filescavenger.html