extra harddisk

[headack]

hi!

I am running windows xp pro,and Yesterday Iwas mounting in harddisk number 3, as a slave.This harddisk was in use with windows 95, my old pc,now used by my children.This old pc broke down,says missing vmm32 vxd,please reinstall windows.
I open up the pc,removed this old harddisk(2gb) and mounted it in the pc I am using now,as the third harddisk slave.
I thought I was able to read and see the data on this old harddisk,but,my pc was acting very strange,it started up and when I tryed to open this disk nothing was readable,only a lot of strange name of the folders.Norton could not even scan it for virus.When I clicked on properties,I could see the disk was almost full,but was not able to do anything at all.What is wrong,is there someone out there who can tell me?

[pentachris]

I would download diagnostics from the drive's manufacturer and check the drive's integrity.

[risk_reversal]

You say that you are running XP pro which could have been formated as NTFS or FAT32. You say that you took out a 2Gb HDD from an old 95 system.

I would say that the 95 system was almost certainly formated with FAT16. The fact that the HDD is 2Gb would confirm this.

Maybe the issue here is that you have NTFS on pro and you want to add a FAT16 HDD.

I have never used NTFS since I run my systems on FAT32 but perhaps someone more knowledgeable in this area could comment on this.

Another possibility could be that the HDD you took out from the 95 system is bootable (ie has an o/s on it already) and is set to 'active' as well. This could be an issue.

You did jumper the 2Gb HDD correctly?

Hope this helps

[Paul Komski]

Maybe the issue here is that you have NTFS on pro and you want to add a FAT16 HDD.
That is not an issue here. FAT16 can be seen by just about every OS and XP itself can "see" both FAT and NTFS - regardless of whether it is home or pro or installed on FAT or NTFS. It is the OS or software doing the reading that is important and not the file format itself.

If the disk is actually recognised and can be seen in the BIOS, in MyComputer and in WinXP's disk management (RClick my computer and choose manage) then the issue is with the integrity of the data or the file system on it and why it is not being deciphered correctly - rather than anything to do with the type of format in use.

Do you just wish to use this disk or do you want to extract any data from it? The best way forward largely depends on the answer. It would be nice to run an a/v and scandisk or chkdsk on it but if data recovery is the priority grab GetDataBack from www.runtime.org and scan the drive before doing anything else.

An afterthought - could there have been any drive compression being used on the small (by today's standards) drive?