Old hard drive to old pc

[drew21]

My gaming pc of 5yrs old or more crashed about 5months ago i just go the money for new parts mobo cpu gpu & ram . now after there were delivered I find out i have to replace A: the opticals or B:the hard drive or both at this time (the new mobo only has one ide slot) I don't have the money for both and I never got an OS cd I was wondering if .


First I could hook up my hard drive Western digital to and old pc http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/..._link=ot_we/prodlink/en_us/390834/loc:0&cc=us in line or as slave and remove the old data.


If so could I make cd to reinstall or repair the newish pc

 

[Guest]

hi,

your mainboard may have only one IDE slot, but do you have an IDE cable with 2 drive connectors?
if the new mainboard bios allows it, you have then a master IDE hdd and a slave optical on the same IDE port.
in most of the cases this should work.

if not, the quickest way to move to the new system keeping your installed OS+software would be to simply copy your existing partition on the new hdd you plan to use on the new configuration.
you can use this free software for that:

http://www.partitionwizard.com/

of course, your OS will have quite a shock when booting the first time on the new hardware (mb+video+etc.), but unless it was already in a shabby state, it should survive and update accordingly from the net after a few reboots.

hope it helps.

good luck.

 

[Paperdoc]

Since you say "the opticals" (plural) and "the hard drive" (singular), it sounds like you had both IDE ports in your old machine in use for at least three IDE devices. I suggest you set up the new machine with your old HDD as the Master unit on its only IDE port / cable (plug the black END connector of the cable into the HDD and set its jumpers to Master), and ONE of your old IDE opticals as the Slave device on the cable. Leave the other optical unused for now.

Ideally you need to do what is called a "Repair Install" when you move an HDD containing an OS to a new machine with a whole bunch of different devices. The best way to do this is with your original Win Install CD, but you don't have one. You still should be able to do it if you can borrow an Install CD for the SAME version of Windows. For example, if your HDD has Win XP Pro with Service Pack 3, try to borrow an Install disk for that same version.

You configure your BIOS Setup so that the machine will boot first from the optical drive, and then from the HDD. You place the Install CD in the optical and boot from it just as if you were going to Install Windows. BUT do NOT do a normal Install. Instead, watch at the beginning for options and choose a Repair Install. This process will survey the hardware devices found in the machine and compare that to the drivers already installed on the HDD, then go about fixing all the mismatches. When it is done you reboot after removing the CD, and it should work.

So, how do you get the second optical unit into play? Three choices.
1. Scrap it and buy a replacement that has a SATA interface.
2. Buy an IDE controller card you can plug into a PCIe slot, and hook up to that.
3. Buy an adapter that allows you to plug an IDE device into a SATA port. (Be careful not to get the reverse unit that plugs a SATA device into an IDE port.) Read up carefully in its instructions how you must set the jumpers of the IDE optical unit (Master or Slave) to use the adapter.