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Swapping hard drives about
steve m - 26/7/13 at 01:14 PM

Just a quick question for those that are "PC literate" and i am not !

Ive bought a new (newer) desktop, as the old one has motherboard issues, and if left on for more than a couple of hours freezes, and doesnt want to play /work etc

so the new one is pretty well the same, and has come with a 80gb hard drive with windows 7 installed, but nothing else

My old hardrive with all my data and windows XP is the same and also SATA so i installed it on to the new PC but it doesnt like it, and refuses to run, just loops though setup and diagnostics, so can i copy over all the data on to the new one ?

Or i really would like my old hard drive with all its data installed into the new PC, and working

hope that makes sense!!

regards

Steve

Slimy38 - 26/7/13 at 01:19 PM

What I would do is get an external SATA to USB drive connector, something like this will be fine;

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/151026157961

Then you can boot your new pc, plug in your old hard drive and just copy the contents you want to keep. Then you can format the old hard drive, get rid of any evidence of XP, and it should behave itself a bit better.

mcerd1 - 26/7/13 at 01:23 PM

did you have both drives on the new machine at the same time ?


do you want it to run win7 and just see your old data ? (i.e. not be able to run your old programs) - this should work


or do you want it to run winxp ? - XP won't like you putting it into a new machine without re-installing
(as far as its concerned you've just changed all its major components)



so toi run win7 you'll need to set the bios to boot from the win7 disk, and then just make sure the other one shows up in the bios - this way your old one should appear as D: drive (then remove the XP and installed program remnants at you leisure while keeping you files)


[Edited on 26/7/2013 by mcerd1]

loggyboy - 26/7/13 at 02:11 PM

You can use the new drive to hold the OS, and install programs etc, all you need to go is get your old drive, find the pins at the side or front and move the jumper (small plastic connector about 5x4x2mm), swap it to the pins that are labeled (usually a sticker on the main body) to SLAVE.
Open up your PC (disconnected from mains), connect it to the SATA cable that from the old pc, (fairly easy to see on the Mboard, sort of D shape), as you have changed the pin it shouldnt matter which one you plug it in to if there are more than 2 ) the connect the large 4/5 wire power connector to the old drive, check everyings pushed together and fire her up. The old HDD should appear automatically in 'my computer' or what even 7 has these days. If not google should lead you to the admin settings to select hard drive letters (Disk Management IIRC)

[Edited on 26-7-13 by loggyboy]

britishtrident - 26/7/13 at 02:12 PM

As said Windows boot hard drives can't just be swapped from one PC to another without a re-install (in contrast modern Linux will quite happily just boot and load the required drivers).

As already suggested I would use a cheap external SATA enclosure to transfer the data. These external enclosures can be found on ebay very cheaply.

If your are using Firefox and Thunderbird you can very easily backup and recreate your account settings, bookmarks and email with Mozbackup but the versions of Thunderbird and Forefox have to be the same.

If your old PC was running for a couple of hours before freezing it would likely have been an overheating issue, quite often one the fans stop running after a while or just build up of dust in the power supply.

mcerd1 - 26/7/13 at 02:27 PM

quote:
Originally posted by loggyboy
find the pins at the side or front and move the jumper (small plastic connector about 5x4x2mm), swap it to the pins that are labeled (usually a sticker on the main body) to SLAVE

I think your getting mixed up with the old PATA dirves, SATA doesn't need you to set them master or slave as there is only one drive per cable

even with the old PATA drives you would only set it as a slave if you were adding it to the same cable as an existing master drive....


also by 'D shaped' power connector do you mean the old molex ones that PATA uses ?
SATA uses those flat/skinny L shaped ones...



[Edited on 26/7/2013 by mcerd1]

loggyboy - 26/7/13 at 02:53 PM

Yes, proably thinking of IDE/PATA. I only have 1 SATA and its my master so not really looked at it!

Not Anumber - 26/7/13 at 05:39 PM

The surest fire approach would be to use Microsofts own application to do just this from your old PC.

Put the drive back in your old PC, download and install this utility: http://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/download/details.aspx?id=4503

Switch it off to cool down again for a while and then use the utility to save all your files and settings to either burnable dvd or an external plug in (big) memory stick or external drive.

When done run the same utility of the Windows 7 machine to pull all of this accross. make sure you have the same named user account on both machines and it will be fine.