Changing Hard Drives

Situation:

Two computers, one broken (mobo), one working. Can I just pull out the hdd on the working computer and replace it with the hdd from the broken computer without needing to format it?

I have a term paper on the hdd of the broken pc and I really really need to get it..

Thanks for all the help!

Peace!

 

you can't replace the HDD in your working computer with the one in your broken PC without formatting it, *unless* both mobos have the same chipset and even then it may not work or they are the same mobo

but, the good news is you can put the HDD from the broken computer into the working computer as the slave drive ... using the one that is already in the working computer as the boot drive(primary)

a few things though, be careful of ESD(eletrical static discharge) keep yourself grounded at all times, all you need to do is grab any exposed part of the case(any place that hasn't been painted and is metal) ... also make sure your jumpers are set correctly, it should say right on top of the HDD itself, or you can visit the manufacturers website, bearing in mind that they are different for each company .. make sure your working PC can recognize the file system your HDD on your broken PC has on it ... as older versions of windows do not recognize NTFS .. and obviously the physical space in your working system to screw the drive into the bracket and the proper cables

 

soo....If i set my hdd as slave i won't need to format it?

and setting a slave drive is as easy as changing the jumpers and plugging it in right?

or are there more steps to follow?

thanks again

 

Don't format the drive. You'll lose your term paper.

 

that pretty much sums it up ... in other words, yes

for more details: http://www.pctechguide.com/tutorials/HardDrive1.htm ... that's more information than you will need however

 

Sorry to disagree, Pyrate, but I don't think the chipset has any impact on the hard drive in a machine that is using the IDE drive interface. I've moved hard drives between machines as both master and slave with never a problem -- assuming that the drive geometry can be set up properly for the transplanted drive in the receiving machine's BIOS.

The drive geometry settings in the new machine's BIOS must match the drive geometry settings used in the old machine for the transplanted drive. Using the "Auto" setting in the BIOS doesn't always guarantee that the drive geometry settings will be the same. But it does work most of the time.

You can run into a problem when moving a drive from a newer machine to an older one that has a BIOS that cannot support the full size of the drive that's being transplanted into it. When that happens, it is impossible to match the drive geometry settings properly, and the receiving machine may not be able to read the drive and certainly won't be able to see the full capacity of the drive. Either way, you'd then have to re-format the drive to use it reliably in the older machine.

In short, martian001, you can probably transplant the drive from the broken PC to the one that works. If you can transplant it as a slave, you'll be able to transplant it as a master. And you can change the master/slave status as needed.

One check to make on starting up after the transplant: make sure that you can read accurately from the drive before you let the system write to it. Boot from a floppy, and make sure that you can get at least an accurate directory listing from the transplanted drive. DON'T use the transplanted drive as a boot drive until you've made the test. Windows writes lots of stuff to the boot partition during its startup.

The reason: if you've got your drive geometry settings wrong, the drive will look in the wrong sectors for the data it's trying to find. (You'll get "unpredictable results" when you try the read test.) And if the drive is looking in the wrong sectors for its data, you can be quite sure that it will also write to the wrong sectors -- quite possibly over-writing something you wanted to keep.

 

Not to mention the hardware differences between the two computers. If you put the HDD in as Master & boot off of it, you may spend some time having Windows finding 'new hardware' and locating the drivers for it. You may even need to download the drivers, if you don't have them on hand. Easier to put it in as a slave drive & just get the data you need from it.

 

not with XP you can't ... I dont know about other OS' but XP does not allow you to use the same HDD *and* boot with it, as an anti-piracy measure ... XP configures itself for one peice of hardware ... ive tried to move a boot drive from an intel chipset 82810G to my current Via and was unsuccessful ... maybe there is a work around but microsoft did not intend for you to be able to do that .. I even had to call microsoft to re-validate my OS when I installed a new CD drive ... also I've heard that if you have a mobo with the same chipset you can do it, ive never tried that, because XP just thinks it's the same mobo

 

thanks a lot guys! i'll post how it works