Member Avatar for sas1

Hi all.

I'm pretty sure I fried my motherboard or processor. I'm probably going to leave it to someone else to fix it, but I was just wondering if it possible/advisable to take the hard drive from that machine and put it into another machine (both running XP), hook it up as a slave and back up everything?

Ordinarily I wouldn't bother, but there's a lot of information on that hard drive that is needed tomorrow, and I'm not sure I can get someone to fix the motherboard/processor in time.

If it is possible, are there any pitfalls or dangers that I should know about?

Both copies of XP have different serials btw - 1 is XP Home Edition and the other is XP Media Centre

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by jbennet

Dani AI

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A few practical notes to build on the replies above ( and ): moving the drive to a working machine is the usual way to recover files, but there are a few pitfalls worth knowing about and a safe sequence to follow.

  • Use a USB-to-SATA/IDE adapter or an external enclosure if you can — it is the least invasive way to attach the drive and avoids jumper/cable mistakes. If you must install the drive internally, make sure connectors and jumpers (for older PATA drives) are correct and that the host BIOS will still boot from its normal drive (change boot order first).
  • Before manipulating files, make an image/clone of the drive if the data is critical. Working from a clone preserves the original if something goes wrong.
  • If Windows reports "Access denied" (the point raised), the usual fix is to take ownership and grant the host Administrator account permissions: Properties → Security → Advanced → Owner, then replace owner on subcontainers. On XP Home the Security tab is hidden in normal mode; you can view it in Safe Mode or disable Simple File Sharing on XP Pro. As an alternative, a Linux Live CD will often read NTFS data regardless of Windows ACLs.
  • Important exception: files encrypted with EFS (Encrypted File System) are not recoverable just by copying the drive unless you also have the original user’s certificate/private key. If EFS was used and you do not have the keys, a repair shop or recovery service may be the only option.
  • If the drive is not detected or makes unusual noises, stop and consider professional recovery; powering a failing drive repeatedly can make recovery harder.

Quick checklist: image the drive, attach via USB if possible, boot host as Administrator, take ownership if needed, copy to a separate safe disk, verify copies.

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Member Avatar for TT4Titans

No problems Bud just set the one you want to get info off of and set it as slave hook it up boot it let it recognize and start gathering all you want off.

Member Avatar for sas1

Thanks a million

Member Avatar for jbennet

hey, if you have formatted it as NTFS and decided to make your folders private when you set up your user account then you will run into problems with messages sayng access denied

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