Frustrated now!!

waynegohl

waynegohl

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thats putting it mildly, i sent my box into the computer shop to put in a second hard drive for storage purposes and last night when i switched it on the 2nd hard drive comes up and not the first one. i took the hard drive out a few mins ago and then the pc would not start so i put it back in and its fine.

i have no idea how to access my info (email) on the first hard drive now even though i pick the hard drive up under "my computer".

when i looked in bios the original hard drive is primary one thingy and this 2nd hard drive is slave i think.
 
So they actually loaded Windows on the second hard drive as well? What a lovely pirate store :p
 
no the its an old desktop of mine that does not boot up so i cannot get the info off before i got rid of it, so i thought why not use it rather in this desktop. it was my 20g harddrive that was in use so no it was not pirated as it was mine.
 
What info are you wanting to access from the other drive? If its email then boot up the old drive and export a PST file from Outlook, then copy it over to the new drive and import it. Thats if you using Outlook. If you using Thunderbird there should also be an export option.

Try getting your Bios's boot menu up and selecting the original drive to boot from, alternatively disable a drive in the BIOS to access the old one. There are many ways to tackle this and it all depends exactly upon your situation.
 
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ok my idea was this.

the pc i am using has obviously all my info on as per normal pc and i wanted to put this 2nd hard drive in just to store my music and videos thats all. but the problem is the 2nd harddrive is running on my pc now instead of the first one so i have no access to my original hard drive and info.

i can see the hard drive in "my computer" but ideally i want the first hard drive to work and this 2nd one just to store the info.
 
You mean that you are now booting off the second (new) hard drive?

That must mean that they loaded windows onto the new drive which they could either done by cloning the original drive (like using ghost) onto the new one, in which case all your info would be there too, or they freshly installed windows on the new drive?

This could be a pirate installation, is there any of your old data available.

Usually fitting a second hard drive is a simple affair. If you can see the original drive under My Computer you should have access to the content of the old drive. Is there still a windows folder on the old drive? can you see it?

Can you open the PC now and maybe we can find a solution by looking at the jumpers and actual physical connections :)
 
you just gave me an idea. what will happen if i can disconnect it from booting up when i log in will that automatically allow my original hard drive to boot up?

the hard drive the guy put in is mine with windows xp professional on it but it looks like it is not upgrades to any of the service packs.
 
If you unplug new drive then boot up with the old one, it should be back the way it was provided they didnt format the old one.

Are the drives SATA or PATA/IDE. SATA drives are the new ones with the thin cables, PATA/IDE are the traditional drives with big fat ribbon cables.
 
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no it was not formatted, what i am worried about is when i took this old hard drive out the original one would not boot up, but what i should try is disable it in the bios and see what happens instead of taking it out.
 
That could work, I prefer to disconnect it properly though.

If the old drive boots up then you need to make sure that the old one boots up first when both are installed.
 
ok when i logoff just now i will try and let you know.

why would the 2nd drive start and not the first drive, thats what i don't understand.
 
when i checked earlier the original drive was the primary drive and my other drive was second, would that mean that there is another setting i need to change to make sure the original drive boots first?
 
Yeah.. On newer boards you can specify hard drive boot priorities. Check there first. If there is no option, change the original Windows drive to primary master (via jumper and IDE cable) and the new drive to primary slave.
 
is there anything wrong with these settings?

ide-primary master = original hd
ide-primary slave = 2nd hd
ide-secondary master = hl-dt-st-dvdram g
ide-secondary slave = lite-on ltn486s 4

boot sequence - cdrom
2nd boot device - ide1
3rd boot device - disabled
boot from other device - yes
 
It would be a problem if your boot drive was SATA.

Btw, your pst file will be here:-

C:\Documents and Settings\User\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook
 
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daveza said:
It would be a problem if your boot drive was SATA.

Btw, your pst file will be here:-

C:\Documents and Settings\User\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook
Click to expand...

i followed the above but there is no Outlook under Microsoft.

ha ha this is a lost cause.
 
The first hard drive should be IDE 0. Also are you sure there is no setting in the bios that says Hard disk boot priority or something similar?
 
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