Installed ga-p55-usb3 motherboard and reusing HDD but OS not being detected

[corran]

Hello,

I've installed a new mobo Gigabyte ga-p55-usb3, CPU i5-760, Corsair TX650W PSU and Corsair Vengeance 6Gb 3x2 DDR3 RAM into an old Packard Bell iPower j8810 case and I'm wanting to keep the HDD's that came with original system, but when the system gets past the POST and running the BIOS it gives me an error saying can not detect operating system and freeze's up.

I know one way to maybe get around this would be to install a new OS from scratch but there are files on the HDD's I need.

the HDD's are Seagate barracuda 7200.10 320Gb, I thought they may have been set to run in a raid, but it's saying there's not one set on the HDD's.

Any help would be great.

[Dark Mantis]

Hi and welcome to the Gigabyte Forum.

While it is posssible to retain your original installation and data it is inadvisable especailly in your case to try. I would either advise you to wipe your hard drive and do a clean install of Windows and then use backups of your data for any files you want to access or the other option is to buy and install a new drive and put the clean OS install on that.

[corran]

Thanks for the reply and help its really apresiated

If I install a new drive and put the OS on to there, is it possible to slave the old drives and copy the files off that way?

[Dark Mantis]

Yes it should be ok. You will probably have to disconnect the old drives while you install the new version of Windows onto the new drive but after that you should be able to connect them back up and the BIOS/OS should find them ok.

In the long run I would suggest dragging and dropping the old data you want to keep onto the other drive and then formatting the original boot drive to get rid of all the old rubbish that is still on it.

[corran]

That's great, I'll pop out and get a new drive now.

I'll let you know how it goes.

Thanks again. 

[Dark Mantis]

You are welcome and keep in touch.

[corran]

Ok i've got the new hdd installed and win7 up and running.

I've connected the two old drives up and windows is detecting them but saying they need formatting before use, but I need stuff off them and I can't seem to work out how to set the new drive to the boot and the old one's to storage so I can get the files off them.

[Dark Mantis]

I would guess that you have installed windows this time using NTFS as the format and it was FAT32 on the old disks. If that is the case the only way around it is to reinstall the new windows onto a FAT32 formatted disk  so they can both see each other.

[corran]

thanks,

I've done some checking on Google to see how to go about that and it's not really clear and also says that FAT32 can only work on drives of 32gb.

What do you think the best way to actually do it is?

Also will windows 7 install on a fat32 Hdd or will it change it to NTFS?

[Dark Mantis]

FAT32  has a maximum size of 2TB. Maybe you are getting confused with the size of individual files or something.