Cannot see HDD on Explorer

[Lurker10]

Hi everyone,

I've read a couple of posts and most seem to be similar to my problem but I still can't figure out how to do this...

I have a new computer, Dell, and I quickly installed windows 7 ultimate on it. Shortly after I added my old HDD on a SATA. In BIOS I activated the SATA slot, which for some reason was off, and I can -see- the old HDD in my device manager as well as my new one.
However, when I go into explorer I cant see the HDD and I can't access it. When I go to disk management, I can see that the drive is detected but it won't let me assign a letter to it AND it appears as though it doesn't have anything on it!! It only has free space!! Actually, the only thing it will let me do is "delete volume".
But, there is one more thing. That HDD does not have Windows installed, it has Linux, which I think is the problem. I don't want to format it because I have many things there that I want to recover.

Can anyone point me in the right direction please?
Thank you!

J

[freshfitz]

You need a program that will mount a linux partition in window's like ext2fsd. or get a bootable ubuntu cd boot into ubuntu and copy the info to a usb stick. Boot back into windows 7 then copy the info off the usb stick. Don't touch anything in device manager you can whip the data and partition

[mjdodd]

I also had a similiar prob on a ortable with its own HDD. I used the same route to get the data and then used a partion managaer to repartion the disk to a single partition disk and then put a boot sector on it and all now runs. Sometimes a clean HDD is the only answer!
M

[khakilang]

Maybe you go into the BIOS setup and set the priority boot from that hard disk with Linux. Window cannot read Linux hard disk due to different file system. Try it and post the result.