Adding an Older drive.

[Catalyst01]

Hello, I have an old HDD from a 2002 HP with important pics of my children the pc is not starting and I just recently bought a new HP but the drive is SATA. I want to know if I can install the old HDD and retrieve my pics or set the PC to boot from either HDD. The new one is Vista and the old one is XP SP2.

 

[Crashman]

Hello, I have an old HDD from a 2002 HP with important pics of my children the pc is not starting and I just recently bought a new HP but the drive is SATA. I want to know if I can install the old HDD and retrieve my pics or set the PC to boot from either HDD. The new one is Vista and the old one is XP SP2.

If you don't have a place to connect the IDE ribbon cable, you should purchase a USB 2.0 to IDE adapter and treat it as a portable drive. Internal ATA to SATA adapters don't always work.

 

[darkjuggalo2000]

If you don't have a place to connect the IDE ribbon cable, you should purchase a USB 2.0 to IDE adapter and treat it as a portable drive. Internal ATA to SATA adapters don't always work.

may also need some sort of power adapter or molex extension

 

[darkjuggalo2000]

something like this would do

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822999161&cm_re=usb_to_ide-_-22-999-161-_-Product

 

[Catalyst01]

If you don't have a place to connect the IDE ribbon cable, you should purchase a USB 2.0 to IDE adapter and treat it as a portable drive. Internal ATA to SATA adapters don't always work.

I have the slots to connect but not very tech savvy so I checked out the link from darkjuggalo, what is the red O ring for?

 

[Crashman]

I have the slots to connect but not very tech savvy so I checked out the link from darkjuggalo, what is the red O ring for?

The ring connector is a redundant ground you can screw to the outside of your drive. You don't need it, unless you have a habit of zapping things with static electricity.

 

[darkjuggalo2000]

that is to ground it to your case...

 

[darkjuggalo2000]

or the drive... its just a precautionary thing

 

[jivdis1x]

You can not boot to the winXP that is was on the old HD directly w/o installing. Reinstalling xp to the old drive may destroy the data on it. Just use it as a data drive.