The idiots at Best Buy did not slave the hard drive from the dead computer, and there’s data on it I need, so I got an external2internal kit. Plug the ATA and power in, stick the USB cable and power cable in the back, and bingo. I had an older one, so I’ve used these before, but it was a pre-USB serial port and I’m not sure this computer even has a serial port, plus it would be really slow.
The directions specifically say to jumper the drive as master. I thought that didn’t make any sense, but I made sure it was still master, hooked it up, closed the kit, and plugged it in.
Vista saw the device, installed the driver, but nothing in My Computer (except it’s not My Computer anymore, but Computer, one of the few things I like about Vista — not as juvenile or cutesy). Been there, done that with flash drives. Windows sometimes doesn’t assign drive letters to USB storage devices. No problem. So after I found it (they’ve moved things around, of course), I opened up disk management.
Like I said, been there, done that. I should have been able to find the drive with no letter next to it, right-click on it, click on change/assign drive letter, and that would be it. Well, the drive shows up without a drive letter, but the partition says MBR healthy primary, and if I right-click on it, all of the options EXCEPT delete partition are greyed out. I don’t want to delete the partition: I want to get to the data on the drive.
So there’s the problem. Vista sees the drive, but won’t let me do anything but delete the damned partition and I want the data on the drive. I’m more than willing to delete the partition and format the drive after I get the data off, but I want the data first.
Oh, and did I mention that I got the BSOD yesterday? On a computer that’s not even three weeks old?
Patrick Joubert Conlon says:
I’m going to need a new computer soon but everything I’ve read about Vista is off-putting. I don’t know whether to buy one now and spend more money to instal XP or wait until the new new MS OS comes out in a year or so. Chas has given me about a dozen versions of Linux to check out and I’m going to see if I like any of them.
April 7, 2008, 9:33 am