How do Install an old SATA drive in Vista as data drive without formatting it first? I need my data.?

I had an old XP machine go down. I replaced the motherboard, memory, and CPU only to find out that the problem was actually the power supply. An expensive lesson, but now I've got a sweet new machine. I went ahead and replaced the hard drive as well because I wanted to install Vista on the new box and hard drives are so cheap it seemed the easiest route.

I plugged the old hard drive in and Vista insists on requesting that I format it if I want to access it. Can anyone assist me with accessing this data and setting this drive up so that I can use it for media, documents, etc without formatting?

Thanks!

BobHow do Install an old SATA drive in Vista as data drive without formatting it first? I need my data.?
Make sure it is set as a ';slave'; drive (usually a switch or pins on the back of the drive), so that it doesn't try to read it as a drive with an operating system that needs to be loaded.



You'll still be able to access the files.How do Install an old SATA drive in Vista as data drive without formatting it first? I need my data.?
Here's what I would suggest:



Order a 3.5'; portable hard drive enclosure (like this one: http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/ ) and put your old drive in that. Now you'll be able to plug it into any machine with a USB port. The computer will look at it as one big flash drive (nifty, huh?)



If the drive was NOT formatted as NTFS when you first installed Windows XP on it, then Vista will without a doubt refuse to open it unless you format it, losing all data. Another solution is to hook it up as a slave drive in another computer running XP and dump the contents you want onto some sort of removable media.
Buy a new hard drive and install vista on it, set this drive as salve and keep it as back up you save your files this way and your computer will be running vista.
EEJ is right...as long as the drive is installed as a slave, which is a simple jumper relocation on back of drive, you should be able to access the drive. IF by any chance you still have a problem...consider getting a external HD enclosure (they're cheap) and then connect via USB...when all done you can still install the HD in the puter and format if necessary...this request for formating may be because of a format difference...fat32 versus ntfs ...



worth a try

good luck