I purchased a BYTECC external enclosure for my old hard drive.  I configured it as a slave drive, hooked it up and attempted to ACCESS the data on it.  However, my computer keeps asking me to format the drive, which I think will delete everything on it.  Does anyone have ideas on how I can access my old drive without losing data on it?What OS are you using - what FILE system?  Is the file system on your old hdd the same as you are currently using.

Win 98 will not recognise NTFS etc...I dont know how to do it the "Sly" way

But i think Norton Ghost does that, its worth looking into.


ROSShttp://www.theabsolute.net/sware/dskinv.htmlThe old hard drive is windows 98 and I've tried accessing it with the same OS as well as windows XP without successHave you installed the drivers that may have come with it?yes, it recognizes the drive.  When I try to access it, it asks do I want to format the disk, which will erase all data on it.CBJ:

We NEED to rule out as many possible causes of your problem as we are able to rule out.  One way to accomplish this is to check to see if the hard drive will work outside the USB hard drive enclosure by installing it back in the computer as it was before.  

Remove the hard drive from the enclosure.

Turn off your computer and open the case.

Disconnect the new hard drive.

Install the hard drive you removed as master (make sure the jumpers are set correctly and connect it to the primary IDE (IDE 0) male CONNECTOR on the motherboard).

Power up the computer to see if it recognizes the drive as it did before you removed it.  If it does, we may rule out the hard drive, its boot sector, its MBR, and its file system as the cause of the problem.

We may then begin to troubleshoot the USB port, the SOFTWARE drivers and the USB case as the possible causes.