Getting data off an old IDE boot drive : old boot drive conflicting with new one

[jpe20]

Hi folks,

I have an old boot disk (c:\) which has a non-working copy of windows xp on it and I am having a lot of trouble getting data off the drive.

I have tried the following ...
(1) A usb enclosure in which I have tried using it as an extra drive though windows seems to report problems communicating with the device. I have tried various Master/slave combinations on the external unit and tried it on another PC so I have now given up on the idea of using the external USB enclosure.

(2) Tried putting it back in my pc with the new disk along side. My new drive (maxtor) is located on PRIMARY channel SLAVE. I set the old (SAMSUNG) drive to MASTER and too connected that up to the PRIMARY channel and set that to MASTER.

In the 1st instance this failed to boot my new windows xp (which works fine without the old boot drive installed). Fails on the win xp loader page. I suspect there is some sort of conflict with two seemingly labelled C: drives. So how do I remove the "boot" nature of the old samsung disk so that I can access it as drive D:\ without any of these double c:\ disk conflicts???

Any tips appreciated.

Remember I only want to do a simple data transfer (not all of the data just certain folders etx ).

The original boot disc contains a corrupted win xp installation on it due to a later resolved memory and graphics card failure.

I am aware of possibly using commands in the recovery console like fixmbr/fixboot and map though I am too inexperienced to fiddle with this and don't know if it would remove the "boot nature" of my old drive.

Jules

 

[semi-pro waster]

Just because I like to do things the simplest way if I can, have you considered connecting the old hard drive to IDE channel 2 with nothing else attached on that chain and putting the new drive on IDE channel 1, again with nothing else on the channel? Then check in bios that it is set to boot correctly from the Maxtor and see how far you get.

 

[jpe20]

Hi folks,
Just tried all combinations ie putting the old drive on the secondary channel and still windows won't boot with the old drive connected in any ide slot with the new one as PRIMARY MASTER. Must be something to do with 2 C:\ drives conflicting.

Any1 know much about using fixmbr ... will this resolve my issues??? I just need to erase the c:\ boot nature of the old drive somehow!!! How I do this without erasing the data on it I dunno!!!

Jules