Author Topic: Adding a hard drive? (Read 3243 times)

lupinus · « **on:** November 02, 2009, 07:00:43 PM »

Hi All,

My turn for dumb computer question.

If I have a hard drive from my old computer and wanted to add it to my current one, how does one go about doing this?

Also is there an easy way to transfer data from the old hard drive to the one in the new computer?

Perd Hapley · « **Reply #1 on:** November 02, 2009, 07:10:48 PM »

Is this a desktop computer?

lupinus · « **Reply #2 on:** November 02, 2009, 07:12:25 PM »

Yes, suppose that's good to add lol

Vodka7 · « **Reply #3 on:** November 02, 2009, 07:50:59 PM »

Here's a pretty decent guide with instructions:

http://lifehacker.com/137179/hack-attack-how-to-install-a-hard-drive

It's pretty simple, especially if both drives are SATA. If the PCs are a little older, they may be PATA, in which case you'll have to mess with jumpers (which is covered in the article.) Even the jumpers are easy, but they're the only part of the installation that requires you to take a look at how your PC is set up and make a choice accordingly. Everything else is just round peg, round hole.

Transferring files will be dead easy if you put the old drive in the new PC. Just copy and paste like you're used to.

lupinus · « **Reply #4 on:** November 02, 2009, 07:56:29 PM »

Ok, so I poked around in the current computer and noticed a possible, uhm...hiccup.

Suppose the hard drive currently in there is SATA, and the one from the old computer I finally dug out is IDE?

RocketMan · « **Reply #5 on:** November 02, 2009, 08:03:05 PM »

You probably have an available IDE port on your motherboard. Take a look.
Otherwise, there are some good, cheap IDE to SATA adapters available at Newegg.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822998001
I have one of the above. Despite what the reviews might say, mine works very well, never had a hiccup. I use it to connect client's drives to my standalone anti-malware station.

Vodka7 · « **Reply #6 on:** November 02, 2009, 08:03:53 PM »

You've got a couple options:

1) Double check and make sure there's not an IDE port on your motherboard. If it's a big name PC, usually it'll be one or the other, but not both. But, maybe not :) If it's there, use the cable from the old PC, set the drive to master, and you're good to go.
2) You can buy an IDE controller PCI card. I have one in my computer from Rosewill. If I remember right, it was super cheap, something like $10. You don't need any RAID features. Card goes in a free PCI slot and you plug your IDE cable into the card.
3) You can buy a USB external enclosure for your IDE drive. Around $15 at the very low end, $30-$45 for a decent one. You put the drive into the enclosure, plug it into a free USB slot.

These all assume that you want the old drive in the new PC. If you decide that's not the case, AND your old PC is still functional, you can always just burn the files you want to a CD or DVD, or if you don't have a burner, you can pick up a decently sized USB thumbdrive for $20 and transfer the files to that. Or transfer everything over the network.

lupinus · « **Reply #7 on:** November 02, 2009, 08:08:09 PM »

Yeah the old computer hasn't worked for some time, I jsut let it sit around until I got the bright idea to scavenge it for anything useful.

With the IDE to SATA adapter do I just plug and play and would gain access to everything on the old hard drive just as if I had ran the IDE set up with both hard drives?

Also a side question, how would having both affect booting since both would have XP installed on them?

Vodka7 · « **Reply #8 on:** November 02, 2009, 08:12:56 PM »

RocketMan's adaptor is newer than mine, so it may be plug and play. For mine I had to install the drivers manually and reboot. After that Windows XP saw my drive and let me access it like any other drive.

How it affects booting depends on your motherboard's BIOS. It's theoretically possible that your BIOS would set the boot order to try and boot off of the old IDE drive, in which case you'd normally get an error message like Operating System not found. Except your old drive does have an O/S, so I'm not really sure what it would do :) Probably try to boot into windows and give you a bunch of driver errors. If that happens, you should be able to just reboot, go into your BIOS, and change the Hard Drive Boot Order to have the SATA drive as the first boot.

Perd Hapley · « **Reply #9 on:** November 02, 2009, 08:13:03 PM »

So this "data" are just files like Word documents, videos, etc?

It might be easier to copy them onto a flash drive or CD from your old computer, and transfer them that way. Or, if your computer is too old for either of those things, you could find a computer (friend's computer, work computer) that is already set up to accept a second IDE/PATA hard drive. Put your hard drive in there and transfer them to flash/CD. Or have your friend email the stuff to you.

lupinus · « **Reply #10 on:** November 02, 2009, 08:14:57 PM »

old puter is dead so thats a no go, I'll play around with the adapters after I poke around in there a little more.

Thanks all

Gewehr98 · « **Reply #11 on:** November 02, 2009, 08:19:59 PM »

Whatever you do, do not let the magic smoke out.

lupinus · « **Reply #12 on:** November 02, 2009, 08:29:14 PM »

Quote from: Gewehr98 on November 02, 2009, 08:19:59 PM

Whatever you do, do not let the magic smoke out.

You mean that wasn't from celebratory fireworks launched in honor of my success?

RocketMan · « **Reply #13 on:** November 02, 2009, 08:32:14 PM »

^^^^ Gewher98 speaks the truth. Follow his advice. It is nigh on impossible to stuff the magic smoke back into electronic parts once it has escaped. And if you do succeed, you would have to make some kind of sacrifice to the Gods of Binary to actually get things to work again. Maybe send them fistful's, uh, never mind.

Jim147 · « **Reply #14 on:** November 02, 2009, 08:43:17 PM »

Quote from: Gewehr98 on November 02, 2009, 08:19:59 PM

Whatever you do, do not let the magic smoke out.

Reliving your high school days.

Oh, the other magic smoke. I did that once. And yes it was a customers unit.

jim

Phantom Warrior · « **Reply #15 on:** November 02, 2009, 09:02:27 PM »

You could put the old hard drive in an enclosure. Then you would be able to just plug it into your new computer as a USB external hard drive. The plain enclosures are usually $20 or so.

Physics · « **Reply #16 on:** November 02, 2009, 09:10:01 PM »

Quote from: RocketMan on November 02, 2009, 08:32:14 PM

^^^^ Gewher98 speaks the truth. Follow his advice. It is nigh on impossible to stuff the magic smoke back into electronic parts once it has escaped. And if you do succeed, you would have to make some kind of sacrifice to the Gods of Binary to actually get things to work again. Maybe send them fistful's, uh, never mind.

My boss told me today that recently a student let the magic smoke out of a multimeter by trying to measure the resistance between the terminals of a neon light transformer.

Perd Hapley · « **Reply #17 on:** November 02, 2009, 09:16:13 PM »

Aren't neon lights usually pretty juicy?

Physics · « **Reply #18 on:** November 03, 2009, 12:20:48 AM »

Quote from: fistful on November 02, 2009, 09:16:13 PM

Aren't neon lights usually pretty juicy?

15kV for this particular transformer. It really wouldn't have mattered even if he had used the correct setting on the meter, it's only rated to 1kV.

Silver Bullet · « **Reply #19 on:** November 03, 2009, 12:26:19 AM »

Quote from: Gewehr98 on November 02, 2009, 08:19:59 PM

Whatever you do, do not let the magic smoke out.

Smoke-emitting diodes.

RocketMan · « **Reply #20 on:** November 03, 2009, 12:50:00 AM »

The smoke-emitting capacitors make cool sound effects, and sometimes confetti, to go along with the smoke.

Perd Hapley · « **Reply #21 on:** November 03, 2009, 01:18:45 AM »

Quote from: Silver Bullet on November 03, 2009, 12:26:19 AM

Smoke-emitting diodes.

I was going to say that, but you SED it first.

lupinus · « **Reply #22 on:** November 03, 2009, 05:36:54 AM »

next question.

In light of poking around at external enclosures, I yanked the hard drive from my old laptop. I looked it up at it is a 2.5 and lists an ATA-6 interface.

I'm not familiar with this, is it standard for 2.5 inch drives and would work if I got one of the combo 3.5/2.5 enclosures?

RocketMan · « **Reply #23 on:** November 03, 2009, 07:37:51 AM »

ATA-6 is a standard parallel interface for 2.5 laptop hard drives. It is a modification of the ATA-100 interface for 3.5 inch hard drives, if I am not mistaken. It has a smaller connector with a 44-pin count, versus the larger 40-pin connector found on 3.5 inch desktop drives.
If you purchase an enclosure that works with parallel interface laptop drives, you should be good to go.

InfidelSerf · « **Reply #24 on:** November 03, 2009, 10:22:53 AM »

Get yourself one of these adapter

They are very useful. If it's an IDE drive just set the jumper to cable select, if it's SATA just plug it in.
You can generic brands for about $15 I prefered the Vantec because it had an on/off switch for the powersupply

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Author Topic: Adding a hard drive? (Read 3243 times)