Currently I am running a Windows Vista system with a 1 terabyte raid array that I had networked to my old XP system, but it (the old XP system) apparently has decided to drop dead. Is there any easy way to simply install the hard drive from my old XP box into my new system? I have a bunch of archival stuff I need off that drive and am just not in the mood to fuss with fixing the old box.
Also, I am currently playing Badmotorfinger
Tunch is hiding.
*** Update ***
Apparently I have some Republican commenters:
All you have to do is waterboard the XP box, and it’ll give you all the data it has.
Thanks.
Wolfie1974
I’m surprised you didn’t include the threat to cut those of us who would advice to buy a certain computer associated with a certain fruit.
Joshua Norton
You can try using an external hard drive case that you plug in via USB – if I’m understanding your problem correctly.
Ninerdave
Was just listening to Jesus Christ Pose the other day. Awesome song.
You should be able to just drop it into your Vista box and pull all the stuff off of it you need.
John Cole
@Joshua Norton: You are, but I would rather just attach it as a second drive in my new computer, but I don’t want to screw up the raid array.
Ninerdave
@John Cole:
You (usually) have to specifically add a drive to your array. This should just appear as another drive. Shouldn’t muck anything up.
Mike Brown
You could always take the drive from the XP box and install it in the vista box. This takes time and is usually a headache……
You will be better off with this:
http://www.amazon.com/Vantec-NexStar-NST-D100SU-2-5-Inch-3-5-Inch/dp/B00180MMZC/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1240597020&sr=8-1
I use this device on a regular basis.
cleek
what Joshua Norton said. zip over to your local computer store and get a USB drive enclosure ($20) . just make sure you note the type of drive you have (SATA or IDE/ATA) so you buy the right interface.
Lavocat
If Tunch hates Badmotorfinger, Tunch is in for a real treat with Superunknown.
And, yes, blasting “Black Hole Sun” will get you threatened with arrest by the neighbors.
Perhaps if you get right in Tunch’s face and play air guitar. Yeah, that’s the ticket.
Catsy
I’m assuming this is a SATA drive, right? And not an old PATA/IDE drive?<br/
As long as you have a free SATA port (the connection is keyed and looks like a thin letter L; they are often brightly colored) and drive bay, the drive should be essentially plug and play, you don’t have to worry about any master/slave nonsense or BIOS settings. You might have to fiddle with the drive letters in disk management (Start – Run – compmgmt.msc) if it steals a letter used by a mapped network or removable (e.g. flash) drive, but you’ll have access to the data.
Edit: on the other hand, you could go the external drive route, which is probably easier if you don’t build computers. :>
Ajay
What exactly has happened?
– Is the HDD ok?
– Is the OS gone nuts?
If the OS has corrupted, the best thing would be to simply repair the OS from the OS’s dvd/cd.
If your HDD is ok and you dont care about reusing that machine, I have used this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812119152
This allows you to access the drive from another machine.
If the problem is with the motherboard, you may simply want to put this HDD as the boot disk in another machine and boot up.
DanSmoot'sGhost
You can put the old hard drive into an enclosure that makes it into a USB drive on the new machine. I am running one of these right next to me right now.
AZIO SATA HD Kit is an example.
Easy, works like a champ.
robertdsc
/wrist
Joshua Norton
Arrgg! ! Setting up master/slave relationships and screwing around with the jumpers. Kill me now.
I’ve currently got 4 external terabyte hard drives running off my laptop. Plug N Play finds the new one and assigns it’s own letter to it. You can also reset the drives to point to specific locations via the disk manager in admin tools. (I’m talking XP-ese here. We won’t even consider Vista, but there must be similar apps involved.)
Joe Lisboa
John’s gonna break … John’s gonna break hiiiiiis … gonna break his rusty cage and run.
bvac
Yeah, just do it. Just.. go ahead and do it.
Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse
Tunch is peeing in all of your shoes. You’re going to have to go barefoot all summer, you hippie.
Llelldorin
Depends on your current system, how nicely designed your case/motherboard are, and whether you have any open drive bays. If you’re lucky, you’ll have an open bay, your case will be designed well enough that it’ll be relatively straightforward to just screw in the extra drive and there won’t be any airflow/heating issues, and then you can just plug it in to an open port.
If you’re unlucky, your existing setup will be a pile of cheaply screwed together crap, installing the extra drive will require a blood offering to the bracket gods, and when you’re all done your existing RAID will immediately overheat, destroying all your existing data.
I’d go with the external case, myself, unless you’re really out of other options. Lots of external cases are also crap, but it’ll probably work well enough for long enough to let you save your data.
Matthew
I’m with bvac.
Just do it.
It won’t mess with your RAID configuration.
If it’s a SATA drive you don’t need to mess with jumpers.
If it’s an IDE drive and you set it up on a currently unused controller; still no jumpers.
No big
cleek
Badmotorfinger is a good album, but they put all the really great songs first, so the latter half feels really weak compared to the first. they should’ve spread the strong stuff around.
as it is, i always turn it off after the first 5 or 6 songs.
Ripley
I had two computers swan dive in a week. The new computer w/ Vista has a SATA set up so I can’t just plop the old XP drive into it. There was much wailing and rending of clothes. I haven’t decided if it’s worth the effort to try bringing the old drives to the new system. Walking away seems like a good option.
The question is what happened to the XP system? Windows fail or hard drive fail or…??
Just had Screaming Trees pop up on the iTunes, so there’s that.
Llelldorin
@Wolfie1974:
Heh… this is pretty much a ecumenical issue. I’m pretty familiar with many of the Apple cases, and Apple’s made some real crap over the years (I dare you to install RAM in an 8500 without bleeding, for example), along with some wonderful cases.
I haven’t had a chance to work in a current Mac Pro, so I can’t comment on the current tower design. The rest of their current designs are built like laptops—cool-looking, but brutally fiddly to work in.
I’ve worked in PCs that made me weep with envy, and others that I wanted to hit with a rock, then bury under a crossroads at midnight with iron nails through the processors. I’m hoping for John’s sake that his is closer to the former.
dmsilev
If it’s a RAID array, ie multiple physical disks slaved together in one of a variety of ways, transferring won’t be as simple as buying a single-disk USB drive sled.
The first question is how is the drive array attached to the current XP computer? Is it in an external box? Attached to a hardware RAID card inside the old computer? Attached using the regular ATA/SATA/whatever connectors and RAIDed in software?
If it’s in an external box, the interface is mostly likely either USB or Firewire. If USB, just plug into the new machine. If Firewire and the new machine doesn’t have Firewire, you’ll need a FW interface card, which is pretty cheap.
Internal RAIDs will be more difficult to move, and will probably depend a lot on the details of how the RAID is implemented.
-dms
Polish the Guillotines
Define “drop dead.”
Does the machine power on but not boot? If no, could be a bad power supply. If yes, do you get to a POST screen? If yes, what does it say?
Scott H
Folks with critical archives may want to consider a Drobo. Discount codes are available here and there, like at Leo Laporte’s TWIT sites.
Joshua Norton
Good point. Also, count the beeps. They’re computer code that should point you towards the problem.
Lee
dmsilev, I think you misread his configuration.
Buy the USB sled, it would be the easiest (take the drive with you to make sure you get the correct type of sled).
Depending on the drive type on the crashed XP box and what you have left open on your Vista machine, actually installing the bad HD on the Vista machine inself could be very easy or very difficult.
This is coming from someone who has been building his own boxes for 9 years now.
NutellaonToast
@Joshua Norton: Uh, or just leave the jumpers on cable select all the time and never worry about it…. ???
Tom65
~~~Obligatory “get a Mac” post.~~~
NutellaonToast
If you have an open port, just plug it in and copy. Someone up there mentioned stuff abut heat flow, but you don’t need to put an HDD in a bay if you’re just going to take it back out again.
If you don’t have an open port and your RAID is mirrored, you could just turn off the mirroring, take out a drive, put in the new one, copy, and then switch the drives again and turn mirroring back on.
If it’s a collective array (uh, I forget the real word for it), why are you doing something that stupid? Go buy a single terabyte drive. HDD’s fail a lot and if you’re depending on multiple to work simultaneously you’re asking for trouble. Better yet, buy two and mirror them. Easy, instant backup you never have to run.
Also, if you have a ROM drive that is the same connection as the HDD you want to copy, you can switch those, copy, and switch back.
You’ve got my email in the comment if you want more help. Usually it takes a conversation to adequately address these kinds of things.
Bret
John,
All you have to do is waterboard the XP box, and it’ll give you all the data it has.
Stoic
If you can’t power up (and this is a desktop) it’s prolly a power supply problem. But that’s not what you asked for.
It’s really, really just so much easier to buy an external usb drive case and install the old drive. Even if you go ahead and install the old drive in the desktop later, you can use the external case if you decide to clone your main drive to a larger drive or for backups, or whatever.
Just make sure the drive your gonna pull is either a SATA or PATA (ide) drive and buy the proper external case. They’re cheaper online but Best Buy should have some if you’re in a hurry.
Turgidson
While there are innumerable benefits to having a cat or dog in your life, one of the inevitable drawbacks is that I have yet to meet one that likes teh rock. My childhood dog got very agitated whenever anyone played music at anything more than a modest volume. The cat my gf and I babysat for a few weeks a few years ago would hide in the bathtub.
NutellaonToast
@Tom65: Obligatory Macs have their own suckitude reply.
All computers break. Macs are just harder and more expensive to fix. Oh, and no software yadda yadda. Seriously, when are people going to realize that OS-es are different, not better.
Stoic
~~~Obligatory “All Mac users should please stuff it” riposte.~~~
The Moar You Know
Fuck it. Forget about the data. Smash the disk with a hammer and get on with your life. Get a beer and go outside.
Never mind, Bret just won the thread.
Library Grape
Have you guys seen the latest news out of the GOP? A slew of top GOP members of Congress have called for an investigation into the previous administration’s possible wrongdoing. I wrote a blog post on it at http://www.librarygrape.com/2009/04/breaking-top-gop-leaders-call-for.html
Polish the Guillotines
@Bret:
FTW.
Mr. Stuck
I am currently slowly building a new computer from scratch and will face the same procedure in a couple of months. Everything I’ve read indicates the best way is the external usb case route to copy the old HD . There are small software programs on cnet that are free to accomplish it, I think.
Mr Furious
Soundgarden and computer troubles are not a good mix… My broken PC* wouldn’t make it through “Rusty Cage” without getting smashed with a bat.
*Pure hypothetical—I have a Mac…
Mr Furious
And, yes, the waterboard line wins the day. Brilliant.
My Prius rolls on dubs
So I take it you are Full On Kevin’s Mom then? That’s a good day!
That album plus some Bleach from Nirvana and RHCP’s Mother’s Milk made up a HUGE part of my high school music(al).
Fuck Zac Efron.
Davis X. Machina
@library grape
Enough stupid, packed densely enough, has the ability to warp space-time, so that under certain circumstances (velocity near c, being in the minority…) one can pass from 2001 to 2009 without passing through 2002, 2003, erc.
Library Grape
@Davis X. Machina: lol, well said!
Das Internetkommissariat
Senior Storage Specialist by profession. Email me.
Daro
If you got a blue screen on the XP while booting then write down the error code number and Google it.
You can try to remove all peripheral devices before booting it again. I once had a system “drop dead” purely because of a USB floppy drive plugged in that confused the driver loaders. Eh, M$ – go figure. But as “Polish the Guillotines” suggests… more detail please.
bvac
Whatever the problem is, install Vista on the dead XP machine. I’ve had enough of XP’s fuckups that I only use it for the oldest machines. If a piece of hardware has failed and you don’t feel like replacing it, strip out the good stuff and donate it.
NonyNony
@Bret:
The problem with that is that you’ll never be able to tell whether the data it gives you is correct or if it’s just giving you the data it thinks you want.
James Hare
Just go to your local computer store and purchase a USB to IDE/SATA adapter — they’re about $20 and really come in handy for situations like this. Having one of them means only really having to have a laptop around for system recoveries.
Something like this: http://microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0288075
There are many different types available — many are cheaper than that. The good part about these things is they’re a one-size-fits-all tool. The one I have has laptop IDE, regular IDE, and SATA all on one adapter. I just plug it in, plug in the drive and I’ve got access to whatever data is stored on the drive. When I’m done, I don’t have to put a case back together or anything – I just have the files I want off of the drive with none of the mess of actually fixing Windows.
AhabTRuler
Personally, I am realizing that I am too attached to material possessions. Unfortunately, computers (and even the ephemera contained therein) are to be considered material possessions (unless you are George Berkely, Bishop of Coyne).
Das Internetkommissariat
People, stop giving advice for a problem that has not been completely understood. If he screws up the RAID information his data his lost.
John, is this an external RAID-array? Or is it in a PC, i.e. a PCI-RAID-controller like e.g. a Promistek SATA RAID Controller?
What type of RAID? 1, 0, 1/0 or 5?
The XP boot drive can be yanked out of the old XP box and, if the disk is a SATA, connected to your HDD controller in the Vista box. Otherwise it could be slightly more complicated but not really hard.
John H. Farr
You know, I’ve been using Macs for 25 years, and I’ve never heard a Mac user say “the thing just died…” Not once, not ever. I’m sure it happens, but still… Last week two friends of mine with Windows boxes told me their computers “died.” Sounds like the goldfish people used to carry home from Woolworth’s five & dime.
The Moar You Know
@John H. Farr: Oh, it happens. Apples and PCs use the same hard drives.
The Sad Mac or the Bomb on bootup is the last thing you want to see on your Apple device.
Joshua Norton
Not starting a food fight here, but you’re just plain full of shit. I’ve made repairs on both kinds of machines over the years and have had their problems described as “it just died”.
AhabTRuler
“Fuck, fuck, fuck…nooooooooo!”
Joshua Norton
Exactly. And a bad batch of hard drives doesn’t really care about what OS they go into.
d
Without intent to polarize matters, I would point out that laptop (especially MacBook Pro) + wireless = doing whatever the fuck you need to do on your patio enjoying the weather. I practically live at my patio table half the year, even when I need to crank out reports, write code, etc.
Desktops are weak.
And the RAID questions can’t really be answered without knowing quite a bit more about the setup. Email Das before you fuck it up for good.
Mr. Stuck
I would personally go with a whoolybug in the computer case first. Though water around a computer could provide shocking results. Cheesy I know, but couldn’t resist)
DanSmoot'sGhost
If the old machine boots up, just plug one of these into a USB port on each machine and you basically have an explorer view at each end into the other machine. Drag and drop, nothing could be easier.
Been using one for years, carry it with me everywhere. I have never yet seen two bootable machines I couldn’t hook together and drag and drop files and folders between them without a hitch.
AhabTRuler
Ach-File Server-ooo!
The Pale Scot
My first dog liked Frampton and Skynyrd, and some Deep Purple up to the point Ian Gillian started screaming, hated the Pistols and Johnny Thunder,
And she loved the Pipes, swear to God:
and Bret certainly did;
d
You realize that hasn’t existed since about 7 years ago?
Tom65
My work here is done
Notorious P.A.T.
Post of the day.
The Moar You Know
@Mr. Stuck: If you get water in your computer, just throw it in the dryer. That’ll fix it.
TenguPhule
Gone through 3 Imacs in 3 months.
Screen failure, power supply, power supply.
The Moar You Know
@d: No, why would I? I can’t own a Mac – I need to get actual work done with my computer.
jwb
@ John H. Farr
uh, it happened to me just last week… My old G4 tower just stopped working. I also had a MacBook Pro go on me last fall (for some reason Apple fixed it for free even though it was out of warranty, I didn’t have AppleCare, and I didn’t ask them to fix it for free).
Ken L
What kinds of RAID – 0, 1, 5?
Agreed with others that you should get external enclosure or a kit (power adpter + combo SATA/IDE to USB cable) so that you can hook up your old drive to your new computer and copy contents over.
This can not be said often enough (to myself included): back up, back up, backup. Daily incremental + weekly full is good. Hourly/shadow copy ala Time Machine for Mac is even better but even overkill.
Before you do the connection, make sure your Vista machine is backed up as well.
Martin
Heh, somehow I nuked my screen name on that last post…
They run Windows perfectly well you know and they come with a certified UNIX installed standard.
I have yet to understand how a computer than can run Windows without emulation *and* UNIX/Mac OS simultaneously gets less done than a machine that can only run Windows.
JK
OT
Tedisco concedes to Murphy
http://www.politico.com/blogs/scorecard/0409/Tedisco_concedes_to_Murphy.html?showall
No Minn. senator until at least June
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0409/21672.html
Ked
This really does need a little more clarity on both the helper and the helpee sides. The way I read your post, the RAID is in the Vista computer, and the drive you want to extract data from is in the (dead) XP box… but I’d want to be absolutely certain of that before giving you advice.
Is the drive you want to access part of the RAID array or not? If it is, then getting the data off is not going to be a simple task at all, and I strongly suggest you seek out professional help. If you do anything to break the RAID, the next step might very well be sending the drives off to a data recovery service like Ontrack, who will happily charge you something in the four-figures range. If it is not, then the USB drive connection gadgets are precisely what you want. Using them is exactly like using the ubiquitous flash-memory drives in every respect except for the hard drive making more noise.
Dennis-SGMM
Ford!
Chevy!
Ford!
Chevy!
Krista
I’m a fan of the external hard drive, but I use it solely for backup, as my work laptop’s hard drive died a sudden and complete death a few months back. I had a few important files saved on a USB stick, but other than that…all gone. Emails, files, programs, the whole nine yards. The bosses were not particularly amused.
So, a minor investment in an external hard drive, followed by a weekly backup of the entire system = lesson learned.
And “Rusty Cage” kicks ass. It was one of my favourite songs for jogging. (Although because I was jogging, I’d often mentally substitute “tubby” for “rusty” in the lyrics.) :)
Dennis-SGMM
@JK:
Back in January, Michael Steele told the world that a Tedisco victory would prove that the Republican game was not up. Does this mean that he will now state that the Republican game is up? Or will he simply pack his shit in cardboard boxes to make room for the serious loony who’s bound to be the next RNC chair?
Krista
Definite contender for QOTY.
Stoic
I swear to the gods, I dislike Mac people almost as much as I dislike Republicans. A simple request on how to address a problem with a PC brings them out of the woodwork to start touting and defending their overpriced elitist toys. Really, if you can’t actually help, just shut the fuck up. You are all pathetic.
Tomorrows rant will be about Rahm Emmanuel and the DLC fucks.
tofubo
boot your vista box into the bios (before the OS loads)
make a note of the drives in there and the boot order
take the drive out of the old box, see how the data and power cables are connected, you should have the same in the new
put it in the new box, boot into the bios and make sure the computer sees the ‘new’ old drive
make sure that the boot order still is pointing to the existing (most likely, c:) drive
if you have a add-in raid card, just make sure you don’t add the old drive to that, most likely, you’ll be plugging it into the mobo
if it’s an old ide drive and you don’t gots ide data or power cables/connectors, only then, go the external usb route
or, waterboard it as the previous commenter said, it may not be reliable, accurate, and actionable, but it may be data you want to hear, not necessarily what you’ll need to hear
Dennis-SGMM
@Stoic:
“Aw, crap. My Dodge has a flat tire.”
“You should get a Lexus. My Lexus never gets a flat.”
TenguPhule
Toyota!
JK
@Dennis-SGMM: Michael Steele is currently holed up at an undisclosed location and is unavailable for comment
Genine
Brill
John Cole
@Krista: We already have four really strong contenders for 2009 and it isn’t even June.
ksec
What tofubo said.
rock
The only problem with that is the data is unreliable.
LV-426
Kubuntu – FTW
LV-426
@Turgidson:
Just imagine what it must sound like to a creature that can hear 10 times better than you.
Josh Hueco
@Wolfie1974:
Buy a…Mack.
The Cat Who Would Be Tunch
@NonyNony:
Hmm, makes wonder what type of data John secretly wants to get out of the box…Evidence of an imminent threat to his health since Tunch was put on a diet?
Sorry, had to follow that one through. Carry on.
omen
funny how it’s pc users who are the cranky ones.
AhabTRuler
@omen: Mac users = Smug
PC Users = Cranky
Someone who uses both = tired
Roger Moore
The solution is simple: just restore the data from your most recent backup of the XP box. Or is this data that you care about not important enough to protect with basic protections like regular backups?
Hint for future happiness: don’t rely on the RAID alone to protect your data. Buy an external USB hard drive that comes with data mirroring software. It will give you an extra layer of protection, and it makes it much easier to move all your data to another computer if/when the time comes. It’s also a lot easier to grab your external hard drive than your whole computer if you ever have to evacuate your home.
If you’re really paranoid, buy two USB drives, back up periodically, and take the backup to somewhere other than your home. Your work or a relative’s house is a good choice. That way you’ll have a recent copy of your vital data even in the event of a catastrophe (like fire) bad enough to destroy your whole system.
bago
@Library Grape: But of course. Acts of forgiveness must be investigated, but acts of torture must be quashed. It’s the Christian way.
Krista
What can I say? The snark is strong with this group.
Ked
@LV-426
Yay, Kubuntu!
Unfortunately, the base Ubuntu distro is probably better all-around. But I came from the Windows side of the universe and Gnome gives me hives.
Also, KDE uses the same letters as my nick. Such are the things OS preference is made of.
Ked
And while we’re talking about torturing hard drives, one really hardcore techie trick for recovering a badly failing drive is to pull it out of the computer and tossing it in the freezer. After it’s as cold as it’s going to get (it’s mostly metal, this really shouldn’t take more than an hour) pull it out, hook it up to the computer, and (if the freezing has actually helped) frantically transfer data off before the drive warms up again.
I once made a disk image of a customer’s server with their failing drive sandwiched between a couple of ice packs. Yes, the condensation can be a problem.
I’ll leave why it works as an exercise for the reader.
Jon H
@Dennis-SGMM:
“You should get a Lexus. My Lexus never gets a flat.”
The price difference is much smaller, and I, for one, use my computer far more than I use my car.
I mean, seriously: if you were going to spend 40+ hours a week in your new car for the next few years, and the Lexus cost only $500 more than the Dodge, why the heck would you bother with the Dodge?
Jon H
In atonement for my partisan comment above, I’ll add this.
Something like this can be very useful to have around.
It’s a $35 USB 2 -> SATA/PATA + power cable. It’s not a full enclosure, so you don’t have to fiddle with mounting/unmounting the drive.
The VoyagerQ and similar devices are also nice. They only work with SATA drives, but it’s really convenient to be able to slap in a bare drive, and eject it when you’re done. We’re using them at work. Fill one TB drive up with neural signal recordings, pop it out and slap in a new one.
It’s also good clean nerd fun to spin up a busted drive, then eject it while the disk is still spinning, so you can feel the gyroscopic forces.
AhabTRuler
You need to get out more.
Mr Furious
So is that a complaint or an endorsement?
In my twenty years of Mac use at home and work, I’ve only had a machine require service one time. And annoyingly it needed to go back twice before they (local authorized repair shop) got it right, but I didn’t pay a dime (AppleCare) and if it was still broken the third time it would have been replaced. That was two years ago, and it’s still running strong.
As for real work, I produce twenty newsstand magazines a year on mine. That’s fucking work.
rachel
@Ked: KDE 4 needs more work, IMO, but I still prefer it to GNOME.
Jon H
@AhabTRuler: “You need to get out more.”
I’m just as god made me.