Old hard disc, new PC question

[DanL]

Afternoon,

My PC bit the dust over the weekend, so I nipped out and bought another one (PC World, Packard Bell - yes, I know, but I was in a hurry).

Anyway, the new kit has an SATA RAID arrangement on it, with a couple of drives linked in. I want to grab some data from my old HD, but after plugging it into the power and motherboard it doesn't show up as a drive. The drive was previously the only drive (partitioned) on an XP Pro box I assembled myself.

Windows XP (home) did pop up a quick - "you've added a hard disk" type message, and correctly identified the make, so it must be aware it's present.

My question is - how do I get this showing up as a second drive? I don't want it sucked into the RAID array, partly because I plan to bin the drive after I've got the data, and party because I'm worried it'll want to format it.

Any ideas?

Cheers,

Dan

[docevi1]

is the old drive SATA as well?

[DanL]

Yep - the old one's SATA too.

I've got two spare sockets to plug the SATA cable into, but they're part of the same cluster (not sure about my terms, but hopefully you get the idea) that the other drives are already part of. The controller's an Nvidia one, if that helps? I get an option to configure it on boot, but I'm a bit cautious to play around with this sort of stuff when I don't know what I'm changing!

Dan

[ErnestM]

Don't hook it into a SATA RAID array if you can help it. See if your system has an empty non-raid sata connection that you can use. It will save you a small bit of time/trouble.

ErnestM

[-DeaDLocK-]

Difficult this. Have you checked Disk Management to see if it's there? (Right click My Computer, Manage, Disk Management).

Further options:

1) Create a new raid array for the old drive, selecting "spanning" if using the nVidia Raid controller. It will then create a single JBOD (array) using the drive, and windows should then see it fine. You may or may not be able to see the data on the drive after doing this, but just ensure you don't take the option to clear the drive when you create the array.

2) Disable RAID on the channel that you are plugging the drive into from within your BIOS. Chances are it is enabled.

Do you see the drive in the drive listing when you boot up? Not the RAID array list, but when you first turn it one and it churns out your DVD drive info etc.. If you don't it is likely RAID is enabled on the channel and you will need to disable it

[DanL]

Nope - the drive doesn't show up under disc management (although thanks for this - had no idea that even existed). Sadly, there's no non-RAID SATA slots on the motherboard...

I'll see if I can work out the RAID channel thing next.

Cheers for your advice, folks...

Dan

[DanL]

-DeaDLocK- said:

1) Create a new raid array for the old drive, selecting "spanning" if using the nVidia Raid controller. It will then create a single JBOD (array) using the drive, and windows should then see it fine. You may or may not be able to see the data on the drive after doing this, but just ensure you don't take the option to clear the drive when you create the array.

Excellent - this worked. Cheers! Currently copying bunch of stuff across.

Thanks again,

Dan