add an old hard drive

[dutchy]

Im not really in the know of computers so before I mess things up, i thought i might ask. I have a hard drive that came out of an old computer. The drive is still ok. There is some data on there that I need. Can I just connect it to my good working computer and access the drive ? When I connect it, will it recognise the drive in a similar way when you plug in a usb drive ? Cheers, Peter

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[Shadow110]

There is a couple of options.
There is a USB data transfer cable where the program checks the whole setup and looks for pics and docs, then you select what you want and then it comes over... Last time I used one they were very slow.
Or LAN the computer and the new one should see it on the network and access the files.
Or the old fashioned way, a giant USB drive and drag and drop your old files.

[Feelinlucky75]

If you are talking about putting the old hdd in you new computer to get the files outta there just make sure you do it with the pc off... No hot swapping with stuff like that.

[dutchy]

Thanks guys, the old computer doesnt work anymore so all I could do is to take the drive out. Its now sitting on my desk with no access to it. I opened up my working computer and saw a flat cable that connects to the hdd in that one. There's also an electrical cable with an extra spare connection. Those same cables are both connected to the current hdd on my computer. If I (with computer off obviously), connect the hdd to the cables and start up the computer, can I access that old disc then or does it require changing settings in the bios ? If it's all too difficult, i'll have to drop it off at a computer store and have them do it for me.

[Shadow110]

Just take it to a computer store and they can take all the porn off it and put it either on a flash drive or many dvds

[dutchy]

Just take it to a computer store and they can take all the porn off it and put it either on a flash drive or many dvds

[Feelinlucky75]

lol...

it should work as you said, just plug her in and give it a go. worst that will happen is it wont read it..

[JohnBu]

Shouldn't be too hard.

Take a photo of the connectors for us.

If the hard drive has jumpers on it, set the old hard drive as a slave drive and hook it up to the new PC.

Otherwise you will have to go to bios and set the new HDD as master and old HDD as slave. This will let the PC know which HDD to boot up from

It's unlikely you will do any damage to the new PC, but I would back it up just in case (goof practice anyway).





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[dutchy]

Slave drive is I guess a second hdd just as in when you connect a usb storage drive ? The picture is a bit fuzzy, sorry for that. I can see some jumpers and a black sort of block on it. If that is set to "slave", I can just hook up the electrical connector and large flat connector cable and then boot up the pc ?

[Bogie]

OK, This is what you need to do to get the data of the dive.
You have an IDE hard Drive.
As long as you have a connector available on the flat ribbon cable (IDE CABLE) in your working pc and a spare power plug available then you can do this.
The Black Jumper is what sets the Hard drive to slave. On the top of the drive you will see the legend that tells you where the jumper needs to be to be set as slave (i.e. usually slave is no jumper but depends on the brand drive you have)
Once this is connected and setup boot your pc and in my computer the slave drive will be given a drive letter (usually E: if you only have one drive and DVD rom)
Launch E: copy your data to your c: