Tech Support Guy banner
Status
Not open for further replies.

OS change and Hard Drive Problems

660 views 6 replies 3 participants last post by  DaveBurnett 
#1 ·
My computer's Windows XP OS recently "crashed" so I put in a new hard drive with Windows ME OS. I've installed everything with the replacement hard drive, but for some reason I can't get it to recognize my other hard drives that have information written from the XP OS. The only way I have found to get my old hard drives to work is to reformat them, but that requires deleteing the information on the drives- something I absolutely cannot do. Is there any way I can get these to work with the new OS?
The 2 extra hard drives are a 160GB Western Digital
and a 120GB Maxor (formerly my boot-up drive)

Help with this is greatly appreciated!
 
#2 ·
since XP is not a DOS based operating system - and for other reasons as well the two systems are not really compatible. In order to read your old hard drives you'll have to clear the operating system drive and install XP home or XP pro in order to read the other drive/s. If anyone else has further or differing ideas - post 'em I won't be offended I might even learn something.
 
#3 ·
The "other" drives have been formatted using the NTFS file system rather than the Fat32 file system.
9x/ME and Dos do not have native support for NTFS, so you cannot 'SEE' those drives.
The long term solution is to Format the drives using Fat32, and the you will be able to access them normally. However, it is possible to install NTFS drivers that will allow you to READ (and only read) the data on those drives. This will allow you to recover any precious data before formatting.
Do a search on windows ME "ntfs drivers" in Google and it will give you some info.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
You have insufficient privileges to reply here.
Top