Avian Gamers Network

Heres the situation: I have an old computer that had its mobo die, but its so old I just rather not replace it, but how can I get the data off the 60gb hard drive it was using (WinXP Pro installed)?

Can I just plug it in to my slave slot in my new 2-HD computer? Or do I have to do some reconfiguring in BIOS and getting into Windows recovery?

The main problem I think I will have is which HD will boot Windows. I want it to be the new HD and just take off the data of the old HD, reformat it, put it in the old computer and donate it.

Any ideas or better ways to go about this?

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Avian Football League 2007 Forum Thread

You should be able to connect your old HD to the second IDE (you said it was old, so I'm guessing no SATA) channel in your new computer. When you boot up your new computer, open your computer's BIOS settings and ensure your primary IDE channel is listed as a boot option before the secondary IDE channel. I'd be surprised if it were anything else, but I wanted to be sure.

The fact that there's a viable OS on it shouldn't matter as long as the computer doesn't use that drive as a boot source.

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Liro
"The english language is not a wedding gown, it doesn't get better the more lace you add. It is instead a thong. Less is more." From /.
I need to remind myself of this regularly.

ok cool, the old computer is actually only 3 years old, I'm just not feeling that too confident with this. I've installed videocards, soundcards and stuff like that but I hate messing with anything thats gonna make me loose data or mess with windows. I'll give it a try sometime... thanks Rock.

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Avian Football League 2007 Forum Thread

you won't lose data by plugging it in. do it all the time at work.

worst thing that can happen is it boots to the old drive, and spends 10 minutes installing the drivers for the new chipset on the motherboard.

hell, my last computer that died, (was also the motherboard) i didn't even bother reinstalling windows, just popped the old OS drive in, and let it do its stuff till it was done. Sadly, it ran better than my fresh install of vista a few weeks later.

anyway, if the hard drive is plugged into the slave port on the same IDE cable, and the jumper on the drive is set to cable select, (CS) it should boot to your original drive and have the old one show up as the next available drive letter in windows explorer.

alternatively, if your new drive is SATA, (likely) and the old one IDE, it should be pretty easy to select only the SATA drives as the boot disk in the BIOS, and not the ATA drives.

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~Ravage™
~I know that you believe you understand what you think I said, but I'm not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.
~The problem with facts, is that sometimes they don't support your opinion.

Have to agree with Tavage there. Just plug it in. Make it slave/secondary and boot on your primary.

And the data? I kept my old HD and changed the rest. The comp booted on it installed the nessesary drivers. The I removed the old drivers like soundcrad, motherboard, graphics etc and installed the new ones.
Did that untill my new comp. The old 8 year old 80 GB couldn't take anymore...

Have a friend who says he can recover the data. (Hands him a pack of cigarettes then he's happy) and I now use my SATA-II 300 GB... prob gonna do the same with that the next 5 or 6 years...

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1st Feb 2008

The new HDs are using IDE. Would this be a problem? Also, how do I know which HD is the current master/slave? The drive jumper?

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Avian Football League 2007 Forum Thread

Look for the one with the stripes on his back, and not looking very happy. That's the slave.

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"Perhaps the sentiments contained in the following pages, are not yet sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favor; a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defence of custom. But the tumult soon subsides." - Thomas Paine, Common Sense

There are jumpers behind the drive, and usually the positions are etched in the plastic to get to know what is what, or there can be a sticker someplace explaining it.
Here's one exmple:

http://eshop.macsales.com/Tech/manuals/ ... /IBM72.pdf

thanks for the help everyone, i just did the hooking up and transfer. very easy once I knew what I was doing

thanks again! now I have all my music from 2002! oh god, maybe thats a bad thing...

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Avian Football League 2007 Forum Thread