Solved Win 7 Drives in new Win 8 PC .... Should They Work?

My five year old HP Pavilion crashed with virtually no signs of life, although the 2 320GB drives are only 8 months old, and are spinning when startup is attempted. No messages of any kind on the display; I checked the display and it is good. Bought a new HP, but it has Windows 8.

All my backup data is via Norton Ghost 15/Windows 7 and is intact on a 1 TB external Passport drive. I need to figure out how to retrieve this data.

A suggestion was made to just install the old Win 7 hard drive in place of the Win 8 hard drive in the new computer. New computer can't accommodate both old Win 7 hard drives, so I stuck the C: in, it per normal containing the startup and OS files. The computer would not boot from this drive, and delivered an error message to the effect "No bootable disk or drive has failed."

So the question is would there be anything in the BIOS of the new PC which would make it expect to see Win 8?? Any ideas on why it wouldn't boot from this drive? I realize the drive could be bad, but given the age of the drive, it seems unlikely...

Bios does not care which OS is on the HDD as long it has a boot sector and BIOS points to it as the first boot device. If I understand right, you had those 2, 320 GB drives in the old Pavilion. One of them had Win7 installed on it. As your new Pavilion has space for only one drive you replaced that one with with one of those 320s and it would not recognize or boot from it ? Did you try another one ? When you have 2 HDDs sometimes windows install themselves on one drive with the boot sector on another one.
Now you say that you backed up on the Passport using Norton ghost, You probably backed up whole disk or partition. Can't you install Ghost on the Win8 and use it to retrieve contents from Passport ? As long as you do not restore operating system to C: drive and ruin Win8 installation, you should be able to retrieve just the data you want from it.
Alternatively, you could get an SATA to USB adapter to connect those 2 320GB drives and use them for storage and backup and maybe even to boot from one of them by pointing BIOS to USB as first boot device. Something like this :
Google резултати слика за [url]http://www.coolgear.com/images/USBG-U2IDES133.jpg
or something like this :
Amazon.com: SATA/PATA/IDE Drive to USB 2.0 Adapter Converter Cable for 2.5/3.5 Inch Hard Drive / Optical Drive with External AC Power Adapter: Computers & Accessories
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You are correct about the configuration. I tried both of the old drives in the new PC, but each separately. Results were the same.

With regard to Windows 8, Ghost 15 is not compatible with it. That's the big problem. Since I need the data now, and want a sure thing, I just turned the Passport over to Geeks. I should have my data in a few days.

Going forward, as I have the time and patience, I'm going to further troubleshoot those drives using the conversion stuff you pointed too. Great tip. Thanks.

Then it must have happened as I first suspected, Boot sector stayed on one drive and win got installed on the other one. Wherever windows install they call it drive C: so it does not have to be first drive on the controller. Good idea is to install windows while only one drive is connected or at least to name them before installation so you know what goes where. Also unless you want to backup whole system, don't use backup for whole drive but set it up to backup only data files, each one in original configuration so you can retrieve them separately without using any program which may or may not work somewhere else. If you want them encrypted, you can use drive or folder encryption. It may be some more work but is safer.

CountMike said:

Bios does not care which OS is on the HDD as long it has a boot sector and BIOS points to it as the first boot device.

Click to expand...

The UEFI/BIOS firmware does care, only OS's signed by Microsoft will boot with Secure Boot.

Curmudgeon 10 said:

Bought a new HP

Click to expand...

All new PC with Windows 8 Pre-installed, came with UEFI/BIOS firmware & Secure Boot, Windows 7 is not signed by Microsoft.