I have an older hardrive that i installed into my computer and I need to access the files on it. Unfortunatly it keeps saying the hardrive need to be formated. I know that formatting will delete all the files within. How do I get past this?

Michael, April 2007

XP will not overwrite an old operating system and keep data like some older systems would, you need to slave it to a functioning hard drive in your PC and copy/paste data over.
Dont forget to either set the jumpers to slave or leave the jumper off so it defaults to slave (provided the old drive isnt completely knackered and is accessible).

Bri Dowd, April 2007