My friends computer died so he went out and bought another one. he wants me to help him transfer the files from the old hard drive to the new computer. i thought it would be as simple as hooking up the old hard drive into the new computer as a slave but when i tried this and then tried to view the information in the drive windows said that the drive was not formated and wanted to know if i wanted to format it. i declined out of fear of erasing the hard drive. is there a simple no cost solution to this or will i be forced to buy some software or maybe one of those external usb hard drive cases? i did try different master, slave and cable select combinations as well as different ide locations with no success. I am also trying a freeware program called pc inspector by convar but it is taking a very long time and you can only recover one file TYPE at a time. This seems like a problem that people might encounter every day but i have not located an answer in the fact section or by browsing other posted questions.My guess is the hard drive either had a mechanical failure or the file system is damaged or a boot sector virus has infected it. Another possible cause might be that the file system is not compatible with Windows (if it was a hard drive used on a Mac, for example).

A USB harddrive enclosure will not make a difference, as you are likely to get the same error message. You might try the fixmbr command from the CMD window:

http://support.microsoft.com/KB/314503

I'd suggest you CONNECT the hard drive to the motherboard of the PC from which it came and use the Microsoft Windows XP CD as indicated in the knowledge base article.

After using the fixmbr command, you should use the chkdisk command to scan the hard drive for errors and automatically fix any it finds:

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/chkdsk.mspx?mfr=true

Make sure to use the /r and /f switches with the chkdisk command.unfortunatly the old computer will not boot up or we might have been able to aviod this problem. it was installed on a windows based computer. I did try the chkdsk command and i get the error "the type of file system is RAW checkdsk is not available for raw drives." the pc inspector program is accessing the drive it is just very slow it has taken several hours to get to 11% and this is just for one file type (jpeg) some file types are not even recognized by this program. i was hoping to simply see a file tree in windows so i could select the files that he needs and extract them. Maybe i will just have to spend a little more time trouble shooting the old computer and see if i can get it running but it does not do anything including responding to the power button. a new power supply was installed and did nothing, no lights, no fans, no display.Quote

unfortunatly the old computer will not boot up or we might have been able to aviod this problem. it was installed on a windows based computer. I did try the chkdsk command and i get the error "[highlight]the type of file system is RAW checkdsk is not available for raw drives[/highlight]." the pc inspector program is accessing the drive it is just very slow it has taken several hours to get to 11% and this is just for one file type (jpeg) some file types are not even recognized by this program. i was hoping to simply see a file tree in windows so i could select the files that he needs and extract them. Maybe i will just have to spend a little more time trouble shooting the old computer and see if i can get it running but it does not do anything including responding to the power button. a new power supply was installed and did nothing, no lights, no fans, no display.