Can I harvest my HDD and optical DVD drive from old PC?

[zZ Cory]

On iPhone,sorry for any auto correct.

Here my new build:
Saved Build:
ViewRenameEditDeleteTotal:  $650.37
CPU Intel Core i3-2100 3.1GHz Dual-Core $89.99
Motherboard ASRock H61M/U3S3 Micro ATX LGA1155 $73.97
Memory Corsair 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR3-1333 $22.99
Hard Drive Seagate Barracuda 500GB 3.5" 7200RPM $69.99
Video Card MSI Radeon HD 6870 1GB $179.99
Case Rosewill CHALLENGER ATX Mid Tower $49.99
Power Supply OCZ 550W ATX12V $48.98
Optical Drive Sony AD-7280S-0B DVD/CD Writer $17.99
Operating System Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 (64-bit) $96.48
the above build would be used fr mostly gaming like WoW and D3, surfing web, school work etc.

My Old PC I got Christmas time 2008. It's a prebuilt compaq crappy PC. It has a 250g HDD that only has like 96g total used and an optical DVD drive that works fine. I might downgrade and get a smaller HDD for the new build if the old PC HDD is reuse able. Can it be reusable and would this be smart? And can I take out my optical drive without damaging it? It would save me $18 bucks if so.

 

[AdrianPerry]

You'll need to make sure both the old optical drive and HDD have SATA connectors and not IDE.

SATA: http://photos.pcpro.co.uk/blogs/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/sata-cables.jpg
IDE: http://le.coin.info.free.fr/images/connectique/p-IDE.jpg

You will also need to format your HDD (this will wipe EVERYTHING) off it so make sure you have a backup of files if you need them/want to transfer them.

Also, it's worth paying the extra $5 for the i3-2120 - slightly faster than the i3-2100.

Other than that, the build looks great

 

[masterjaw]

Of course you can as long as they are using the SATA interface. Though I doubt about the usability of optical media (cd/dvd) nowadays since flash drives can easily replace their worth.