Windows 8, WAT?!?

[ttam]

I've got a customer who wants to transfer data from one machine (work docs, aero space models, etc) and copy it over to 9 brand new Win 8 machines.

 

I figured I would just connect the hard drives into my dock station, copy it over throughout the day and call it good.

 

But my Windows 7 work station does not find the drive. 

When I go into Disk Management, it wants me to initialize the drive (wont because it will screw up the Win8 install)

 

I don't have any externals in my shop right now that I can transfer the data (200gigs or so) over to =/

 

Anyone know WTF Windows 8 is up to with this? It shows it as a non partitioned drive.

[whatthe_fuzz]

Have no idea how that happened or how to fix it but its good to see you on here again

[EricX2]

Do you still have access to the old machines or just the hard drives? My first guess would be they are encrypted with bitlocker, but I'm not sure if that is the symptom you would see if you tried putting the drive in another system. I know you wouldn't' be able to access any data, but not sure if it should show not initialized or what.

 

If you could put the drives into the original pcs couldn't you just transfer the data over the network? At the very least you could check to see if bitlocker (or another encryption) was done on the drives.

[ttam]

Do you still have access to the old machines or just the hard drives? My first guess would be they are encrypted with bitlocker, but I'm not sure if that is the symptom you would see if you tried putting the drive in another system. I know you wouldn't' be able to access any data, but not sure if it should show not initialized or what.

 

If you could put the drives into the original pcs couldn't you just transfer the data over the network? At the very least you could check to see if bitlocker (or another encryption) was done on the drives.

Drives are clean and the ones I can't see on my tech machine are brand new OEM drives that have never been used. It was driving me crazy all day.

[GoodBytes]

Did you enable bit-drive encryption, that could be a problem.

[solomongrundy]

what's the exact error mesage when you try to initialize the drive?

I've got a customer who wants to transfer data from one machine (work docs, aero space models, etc) and copy it over to 9 brand new Win 8 machines.

I figured I would just connect the hard drives into my dock station, copy it over throughout the day and call it good.

But my Windows 7 work station does not find the drive.

When I go into Disk Management, it wants me to initialize the drive (wont because it will screw up the Win8 install)

I don't have any externals in my shop right now that I can transfer the data (200gigs or so) over to =/

Anyone know WTF Windows 8 is up to with this? It shows it as a non partitioned drive.

[ttam]

what's the exact error mesage when you try to initialize the drive?

No errors. Just windows doesn't recognize the drive unless I initialize it.. but doing so would mess up the Win 8 install.

[solomongrundy]

No errors. Just windows doesn't recognize the drive unless I initialize it.. but doing so would mess up the Win 8 install.

and how do you know it will mess up the install? i'm assuming you're getting a message that tells you this information. What is the exact wording of this message?

[ttam]

and how do you know it will mess up the install? i'm assuming you're getting a message that tells you this information. What is the exact wording of this message?

When you initialize a disk, it basically gives it a low level ntfs format. This is what you normally do to a brand new HDD in Windows to add it as say a storage drive.

[Alibaladin]

I've got a customer who wants to transfer data from one machine (work docs, aero space models, etc) and copy it over to 9 brand new Win 8 machines.

 

I figured I would just connect the hard drives into my dock station, copy it over throughout the day and call it good.

 

But my Windows 7 work station does not find the drive. 

When I go into Disk Management, it wants me to initialize the drive (wont because it will screw up the Win8 install)

 

I don't have any externals in my shop right now that I can transfer the data (200gigs or so) over to =/

 

Anyone know WTF Windows 8 is up to with this? It shows it as a non partitioned drive.

Is your system running MBR?

[Giggitygoebbels]

It is probable that the Windows 8 Machines are using ReFS instead of NTFS,although it should not be the case as ReFS is not supported as a boot partition.

Try a Windows 8 machine I guess?

How about making the drives into a VHD mounting the drives onto a virtual machine and do everything through VmWare or VirtualBox?

You can then mount the VHD onto the physical machine through device manager and start cloning.