HD Swap Conundrum

[[KFKAS]Death-Speak]

Ok, here's one for the experts. I have XP installed on the primary drive and all my data on a second hard drive.

I wanted to upgrade, so I unplug the primary drive (and set it aside just in case) and replace it with brand new much larger hard drive. Install XP etc. How can I mount the secondary drive in this fresh install without data loss? I can see it in disk management, but says basic/unallocated. I am afraid to do anything to it because the data on there is important.

To make matters worse, I plug my old hard drive back in so I can run like I was before the upgrade, but it's the same problem there too!

I've done some leg work, and I can't find anything on the internetz that's helpful. Short of buying a USB enclosure, which may leave in the same situation, and is a 30 minute drive to Office Depot.

Thanks
DS

 

[unhappy_mage]

Are you perhaps running a dynamic drive overlay? See http://support.microsoft.com/kb/186057 for how to check.

 

[[KFKAS]Death-Speak]

No I'm pretty sure I'm not. No drive in the scenario is over 200Gb and I'm running XP for both installs.

I just need to be able to mount the secondary disk in Windows.

DS

 

[[KFKAS]Death-Speak]

I think I figured it out. The partition information was corrupted somehow. I'm guessing the new XP install tried to mount it and corrupted it somehow.

I grabbed a partition program and rebuilt and was able to recover everything.

DS