I'm trying to take my old slave HDD and set it up as a slave on my new computer and retrieve everything on it. When I try and access it in windows, I can view every file on the drive, but as soon as I try and open a file the computer either completely locks up or blue screens. All recovery programs seem to be working and then freeze my computer or blue screen after a minute or so.

ranchhand suggested that I try and access the HDD from knoppix, and when I do I get this error:

"
Could not mount device

mount: wrong fstype, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/hda1,

missing codepage or other error

In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try

dmesg | tail or so

"
and I have no idea what this means! haha... thanks for the help!

if you use XP's disk management , what file system does it list NTFS or FAT32 ? is it correct ?

Knoppix error of superblock looks like it should be NTFS but the MBR might be saying it is FAT (wrong fstype). Might try running XP's diskpart and see what type is listed.

Was the hdd working fine in the old comp ?

it's listed correctly as NTFS, but when i was running r-studio data recovery (before it crashed) some of the data sectors were listed as FAT32

it was working fine on the old comp. this is actually happening the same with both of my old hdds, one of which is my old boot drive. i tried to put them both back in the old computer and boot, but it wouldn't at all.

your problem is obviously conflicting file syetems.

However this is easily fixed, you can convert a FAT32 system to NTFS without reformatting (however you cannot change it back after), see microsoft's instructions on how to perform this procedure at http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/winxppro/maintain/convertfat.mspx

once it is in the NTFS format, you should be able to access your files from that drive. if possible, deragment that drive before attempting to convert the file system

Don't put a question here.

{r-studio data recovery (before it crashed) some of the data sectors were listed as FAT32}
the above has me stumped, the partition must be fat32 or Ntfs. it can not be both.

boot to knoppix and go to a root terminal type in sudo fdisk /dev/hda post results, use hdb if its second hdd.

download and run Testdisk (read the documentation) post errors displayed.
http://www.cgsecurity.org/index.html?testdisk.html

did you run programs that might have change any data on hdd ?

If all else fails get nortons and convert it to NTFS or FAT32. Just out of curisosity what OS were you running on the older computer and what size is the drive. I know its not likly but XP hates to read FAT16

I booted up in knoppix again to check things and the HDD worked perfectly. I transferred all of my files off it immediately and then returned to windows where it's working perfectly also. very strange. thank you for all for the help!