Migrating FSX to a new drive with a reinstall on Win 10...

Long story short, my boot drive died. I replaced it and reinstalled Win10.

FSX with several hundred downloaded free and payware planes, sceneries, and plugins is sitting on my old games drive. It doesn't run because it wasn't installed to this install of Win10.

I've also put a new games drive on my system because the old one got full. I'd like to reinstall it off of the original DVD to the new games drive, without losing all the settings and downloaded stuff. I know this will work with basic things like freeware airplanes, but what about the payware stuff? Am I gonna have to reinstall all of that from scratch or can I just migrate the directory and then repair the install off of the DVD?

I'm asking before trying it because if it's not doable I'll just start with a totally clean install rather than dealing with moving hundreds of gigs of stuff from one drive to the next.

Thanks, all.

Do you still have the old boot drive?

And, with the original data on it still? (so not formatted?)

If so, keep it for a while.

There may be a simple way to revive it.

(Well, simple, it's been a while, so I would have to look some things up. And it's not easy to explain perhaps.)

Let me know it you still have the 'untouched' drive.

By the way, what was the exact error you got when trying to boot from it?

Was the drive completely unavailable? (so it no longer saw a C drive at all?)

Or did you still see "C" but had a Windows that would not boot?

By the way, what was the exact error you got when trying to boot from it?

The motor burned out. I could do data recovery but it seems silly to spend that money when the FSX install is the only thing I care about from it. At least it was a good excuse to upgrade to SSD for the boot drive.

The actual install directory for FSX is on a secondary drive which is still running fine, though it's completely full so I need to move FSX to the new flight sim drive - it's just the windows hooks on the boot drive that I lost.

Ok. I thought you may have just lost the partition info. Meaning C was on longer defined. In that situation it would seem like C is gone, but actually all data is still there and recoverable. I know a tool, that is on a cd with a small OS that can boot the pc. That OS won't install anything on the Hd's and runs only in ram memory. The tool in it can often restore the partition info. If it can, C is suddenly back, with all data intact.

But, if the motor is damaged, the disk won't spin at all. Meaning no disk access at all.

Curious, how did you determine the motor is damaged? Just wondering, as I never had that happen.

il.

Curious, how did you determine the motor is damaged? Just wondering, as I never had that happen.

When the system reported no boot drive, I felt the drive to make sure it was spinning, and it wasn't. And the drive was hot right where the motor is. I took it apart and the bearing lube was gone. It was past its design life so that didn't' surprise me all that much. I'd actually been looking to replace it already but was seeing if I could wait for a sale on the 850 Evos. My cheapness bit me. ;)

I know, it's too late now, as you already took it apart. But I think this would have possibly been an easy fix.

Was the error perhaps: "No System Disk Or Disk Error"?

If so, that could have had two reasons, both pretty simple to fix.

-1- Pc was trying to boot from the wrong (hard-) disk. In that case you get a message: "No System Disk Or Disk Error" as well.

-2- Partitioning information of C was gone. Often easy to repair. (If you know how.)

In both situations the C drive wil not spin up at all.

When a pc boots, BIOS tests if all components are OK. Then it passes control to the first sector of a (Hard)disk. If that sector contains an OS boot manager, it boots up all of Windows and sets the drive spinning.

If it is the wrong disk that gets started up, nothing at all happens.

The message: "No System Disk Or Disk Error" does definitely not have to mean that the disk is phisically damaged.

It means something like: "This is either not a system disk that I'm trying to start, Or, if it is a system disk, there is some issue on it with the files, or with the partitioning, as I cannot find the boot sector."

Have you tried other ways of accessing the drive. (Before taking it apart.)

For example, after buying the new drive and getting your system back, did you attach the old drive to see if you could access the files?

Actually, despite him opening the drive, the data may be recoverable IF he's willing to pay for it. Not knowing what manufacturer/model the drive is, I just Googled "hard drive repair" and found a few manufacturers and 3rd party services that state they will work on physically damaged drives - for a fee, of course.

So, the question is: how much is it worth to you?

Have you tried other ways of accessing the drive. (Before taking it apart.)

For example, after buying the new drive and getting your system back, did you attach the old drive to see if you could access the files?

No. I diagnosed it as a seized motor based on it not spinning but the spindle area being very hot - i.e, motor which is overheating because a lot of juice is going in and no work is coming out. Taking it apart was just to see if I was right, and I was, because the bearing lube was shot which means there was too much friction for the motor to be able to rotate.

 

So, the question is: how much is it worth to you?

Nada, zip, zilch. :D I legitimately own FSX and all of the addons for it, so it's not like I'm gonna lose anything but time if I have to reinstall everything. It's just that finding and entering all the serial numbers for all those payware planes/utils/scenery packs is going to be obnoxious so if that's avoidable I'll avoid it.