How do I transfer a har drive w/ windows 8 to a working pc?

My old Gateway desktop crashed, is non-repairable, when I tried the harddrive into the newer Gateway, it came up blank blue screen......checking file system on G, CHKDSK verifying files.......& nothing came up on it, a computer tech at the store checked it, said it was working & had 16G on it,.........can I buy a backup device, & try to transfer it to the working computer on a new blank hard drive?

 

I am guessing when you put your HDD in the new computer it tried to boot it. This will almost never work well, if at all. I assume you have your new computer up and running so verify this by booting without the old drive and surf the net, play a movie and type a letter.
If the new computer is 100% shut it down and put in the old HDD. If the computer tries to boot the old drive you can configure the boot drive in the BIOS.

Another way around this is to buy a HDD enclosure and make your old drive a USB drive.
This Amazon enclosure, but it will probably work, there are many like it.
http://www.amazon.com/Inateck-Exter...pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1426689994&sr=1-1&keywords=3.5

If you need more help post your hardware including the new computer model and old hard drive model.