XP MCE Non-System Disk Boot Error

[Syclone]

I recently took a PATA disk that had XP Home installed on it out of an old computer and put it in my MCE box with the intentions of transfering files off this disk over my network to a new box that only has SATA on the MB.

Unfortunately, this seems to have screwed my MCE install. I was able to boot into the PC, but the drive from the old computer showed up in the Disk Management console as healthy, but with no volume name and I couldn't figure out how to access the files or mount the drive. However, when I took the drive out and rebooted the box, I now get a "Non-System Disk" error.

I can boot the XP install disk and even get to the recovery console and see the files on the drive, but I can't do a repair installation (doesn't see the installation) or fix the drive to bootable state. From the recovery console I've tried to "FIXBOOT" and "FIXMBR". I've "BOOTFIX"'d and copied over the NTLDR and NTDETECT.COM files from the XP install disk to no avail.

I made a BartPE bootable Windows disk, and the drive looks fine.

Anything anybody can suggest? I really don't want to have to redo all my MCE settings and show setups, etc. if I don't have to.

[w1retap]

Image the original hard drive, then put the new one in and image it back on. I found transferring the files off the hard drive doesn't always work, especially with the boot sector of the drive.

[Syclone]

Image the original hard drive, then put the new one in and image it back on. I found transferring the files off the hard drive doesn't always work, especially with the boot sector of the drive.

The drive I was originally trying to transfer files off of is not the problem. I can get those off another way. And I wasn't trying to transfer the whole image, just some data files (docs, quicken, pics, etc). I can even do that with a boot CD with network support like Bart PE.

It's my MCE box I hosed that I'm trying to fix. I can't figure out how to get the boot sector or MBR to be recognized.

Not sure I described it well. There are three boxes involved. The MCE box of mine that's screwed up. An old PC that had a bad MB but that I need to move some data off of, and a new Dell this person with the problem had bought that has no PATA. The only one that's really relevant to me at this point is the MCE box because I've got the other pair handled.