Transfering files from XP hard drive to Windows 7

[DanH]

My motherboard on my laptop that was running XP went out. I bought a new laptop with Windows 7 and want to transfer some files from my old hard drive onto my new machine. From what I've read, it seems that I would have to install Windows Easy Transfer on the old machine before I can transfer the files to a machine running Windows 7. However, since my old machine won't boot, there doesn't seem to be a way around this. Other than putting my hard drive into another machine and booting off of it, is there a way to transfer my files?

 

[kegobeer]

If your system is completely non-operational, then you will probably have to remove the drive and slave it into another computer. If there is space on the drive, you could create a new partition and copy the data you want to save to the new partition. Or, you could copy what you want to save to a USB flash drive, SD card, etc.

 

[DanH]

Thank you for your response. I'm sort of a novice about these kind of things, so I apologize if I'm not understanding you right or if I wasn't clear in my original post. I've read that I can buy a USB to IDE adapter and plug the old hard drive into my new computer and transfer the files. Before purchasing this, I wanted to make sure that it would work and that's when I read that Windows Easy Transfer would have to be utilized when transferring files from an XP machine to Windows 7. However, are you saying that this isn't necessary if I use this adapter and plug it into the new laptop as a slave device?

 

[DocBrown]

Tri-head USB Adapter

 

[coppertrail]

External USB Enclosure

I would pull the drive from the machine and put it in an external USB enclosure, then plug it into the laptop and transfer all the files over.

 

[DanH]

Coppertrail,

Thank you, but what I'm asking is if this will work if the original drive is from a Windows XP machine and my new laptop is Windows 7. Will the files transfer over if I just plug the old hard drive into my new machine? Nothing else would need to be done to the old hard drive beforehand, ie install Windows Easy Transfer?

 

[ignatzatsonic]

No, you wouldn't have to do anything to the old hard drive--but you shouldn't try to copy over installed programs. Just go after your personal data---bookmarks, email, pictures, video, mp3, Word files, etc.

 

[DocBrown]

Coppertrail,

Thank you, but what I'm asking is if this will work if the original drive is from a Windows XP machine and my new laptop is Windows 7. Will the files transfer over if I just plug the old hard drive into my new machine? Nothing else would need to be done to the old hard drive beforehand, ie install Windows Easy Transfer?

If you use the adapter or an enclosure for the old laptop HD & it is not damaged in any way, you should be able to copy files, docs, pics, music, etc. But programs will have to be installed new. If you want settings from old HD you should look at the WET tutorial rb:

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/11470-windows-easy-transfer-transfer-computers.html?ltr=W

 

[coppertrail]

I did this with my Mom's computer. She had an XP Laptop and we got her a Win 7 desktop. I pulled the drive from her laptop and put it in a USB enclosure. A word of advice though: Before you plug in your old hard drive, completely disable UAC on the Win7 machine. I ran into permissions issues on the old hard drive, I had to take ownership of several of her folders on her old drive. But once I disabled UAC, it worked fine. And it will not modify your old drive as long as you copy rather than move the files. You'll need to re-install any programs because of registry entries, etc.

 

[DanH]

Thank you everyone. I will try that.

 

[scubasteve]

No need to disable UAC. Just connect the second drive and access the files. You may run into "permission denied" issues (depending on where the files are on the disk). No problem, just right-click on the parent folder and take ownership. I have done the same for multiple disks without issue.

BTW, DocBrown's cable is a great solution. There are many such cables available for IDE and SATA drives...and you can get them extremely inexpensively. Much easier than cracking open the case for such a transfer. I went a little higher end since I connect such drives rather frequently...so I have something like what is pictured below...but the concept is the same. It's just a little faster to drop one into a dock....and it takes up less desk real estate for me.

cheers,
Steve

 

[VLB]

I am trying to do this now with the tri head adapter. The drive shows up as drive F but I cannot access it with out formatting it. The warning say's all data will be lost. Any suggestions?

 

[MacGyvr]

If you're getting a message that the drive needs to be formatted before you can use it, that means the file system on it is already corrupted and unreadable. You might be able to use some recovery software to get some of the files back, but I think you're pretty much done with that old drive.

 

[periboob]

One possible other alternative, not too likely, I had an older USB/IDE enclosure, probably 5 years old and it would not handle my new drive because it was larger than 120GB. Using the new 500GB drive in this older adapter the new computer reported that the drive needed to be formatted. When I attached the same drive with a mew adapter, it worked fine and the data was accessible.

 

[profdlp]

I'd look into periboob's idea first.

Failing that, try to find the partition on the old drive using something like this:

TestDisk - CGSecurity