installing drives into new pc

[seanvv]

Hi there i used to have a dell xps 710 but the motherboard failed , and dell could not repair it so i was offered a new machine which i have just recieved which is running on windows 7. Now i purchased my old hard drives from the xps from dell and want to put them into the new machine so i can access the data movies , music etc but am having problems when i put them in new machine the drive showed up but said i had to format it first before use , dont want to do that or will lose all data can anyone help they were set up as raid o on the xps machine so two drives but really just one oh and running on vista where as the new machine is windows 7 do i need to change something in bios or something ?.... thanks Sean

[PseFrank]

Hi Seanvv, welcome to Extreme Tech Support - Free PC Help

 

I'm certainly not the resident HDD expert here, but it may help someone else to assist you if you could clarify a couple of points.

 

I'm assuming that your new computer has a Sata HDD...I am also assuming that the HDD's out of your old machine are Ide drives...Is this correct?

 

If the above is true....then you have a converter?

 

I'm not sure, but I think that if you are trying to set an IDE drive as a slave, you may still have to set the jumper on the ide drive to "Slave".

 

I'm sure someone will be along soon to advise...

 

Another option would be to buy a USB caddy (HDD enclosure). You can get one of these for under £10. Using a caddy you will be able to retrieve all of your files from the old drives.

[DSTM]

Hi Seanvv. I am not an expert either.

Dalo Harkin our HDD expert, should be along shortly to assist you.

 

I was running 2 SATA Hard Drives and one IDE. Trying to remember how I configured.

SATA Hard drives have done away with the Master/Slave configuration.

If I remember correctly I set the Ide to Slave.

I then went into the Bios and set the SATA to precede the IDE in boot order.

Sure that's all that was necessary.

Dalo will correct me,I am sure,if I have missed something.:)

[Dalo Harkin]

DSTM is spot on, if they were configured as RAID 0 (striped) then the data is split across 2 drives (each drive holds part of the data) this is the biggest flaw with RAID 0 as you get marginal increased speed but the flip side to that is if this happens you lose the data.

 

If you wanted to try and recover the data you need to purchase a drive the same as the one that has your data on and try and re build the RAID array, I wouldnt hold much hope though as it VERY rarely works.

 

For future if you need RAID use RAID 1 (mirrored)

 

So basically if you are hoping to recover the data you cant due to the way RAID 0 is configured, you cant even use an external enclosure as the above way in which RAID 0 works is by splitting the data across the 2 drives.

 

Sorry this isn't what you want to hear, but you know for the future.

[ErikAlbert]

@Seanvv,

No backup of data on an external harddisk ? If not you are learning it the hard way

[DSTM]

  ErikAlbert said:

@Seanvv,

No backup of data on an external harddisk ? If not you are learning it the hard way

 

With Respect Erik.There is absolutely no need, to rub it in.:mad:

We all make mistakes.

[gazzaoz]

If you got both drives back from dell then reinstall them as a raid 0 array in a PC using same raid controller as your old PC and you should be able to recover your data from them.

Check out - Can I move RAID HDDs to new computer? - NAS-RAID-Technologies - Storage read this forum post to the end to find out how it was achieved.

[Dalo Harkin]

But as I said above it VERY very rarely works (even if you have the data backed up) and involves purchasing another drive, so at additional cost too.

 

Rebuilding the array is very easily, getting the Data to then copy the other data isnt. The additional data needed to go onto the new drive is in a drive that it dead...

the drive that is currently working or the controller itself does not store the data you require therefore it's a lost cause, im afraid