Installing an old hard drive into a new computer

Not sure if USB cables have a special name for that or not. My Gateway computer failed. The hard functions. Can I build a new computer use my old hard drive with installed XP operating system in the new computer?

The device manager shows it as being there and operational but it does not show up as a local drive anywhere. I did a lookup in DOS and it just doesnt show up. I have info on it I would like to transfer to the new computer. My SATA drive shows up fine. I have a feeling it has to do with the drives being different types which is causing a conflict. If it is a second drive make sure the jumper connections are set to slave; or set both drives to cable select.

Next go to your bios settings and verify that the drive is installed in the bios. If you can see the drive in Device Manager then the bios knows its there, but check anyway to see if the bios has a problem. If the above items are satisfied go to device manager. Uninstall the old drive; and reinstall using add hardware process in your control panel. How can I get someone to help me with my previous question. I see no one has responded but I feel there are others out there with the same or similar issue..

Appreciate some help on this if possible or respond to daanderud adelphia. You get in to that during boot up by holding the delete key.

Hope it helped. Also, when I go into my computer I can see the new drive as drive E:. I am pretty sure that if I format it I will lose all data… so, how do I get my new computer to be able to read the old hard drive.

Seems like I am almost there but please help???? My e drive is asking to format exterior drive. How to recover pictures from external drive without formating exterior drive. After installing new hard drive I installed all data from old drive including Windows XP using system recovery disks. One thing I cannot understand after booting etc,. I ran Disk Investigator and ran search for site I visited whilst on old hard drive, now removed, and to my surprise got positive results.

How could this be I had not even visited any sites whatsoever since installing new hard drive. It depends on how similar the old and new machines are. I can remove XP or the new disc altogether. Will the OS in the old disc boot up in the new system or will it cause any data loss?

I put my old drive in my new computer and I can see it with Explorer but it denies me access to My Documentds even though I am the Computer Administator on the new machine. I did have a seperate user id and log-in on my old machine. Is there a way around this? No, there are other ways. But that type of enclosure may well be one of the easiest ways. Can I remove my existing hard drive from my pc and instal in my spare pc, remove the hd from the spare.

Both are windows 98se machines. Only difference is my spare is a p3 at mz old one is p2 at mz. I want the spare to operate the same as my existing. Thanks much. I just transferred an old Win98 drive to a new computer as the boot drive. It works after much driver wrangling in the new system P4 — 2. Problem is WIN 98 under the new PC is still hanging a bit and looking for the old sound card, even after the sound card was uninstalled in windows.

I did run registry mechanic and Destroy IT! There lies my dilemma. Do you know how I would go about disabling the old HDD from booting up first? I have a similar question to matthew; I have just been given an old pc with XP pro on it.

The pc I use now has ME. The one I have been given has no space for a second hard drive, however, my ME pc does. May it be possible to put the XP hard drive in the ME pc? If so could I boot from it? I am trying to use an XP HD and connect to a 98 computer to retrieve files from it.

Is it possible? And how? All I get is a white line going across the bottom of the screen. I have a new motherboard and tower i would like to use my old hard drive in the new computer as the primery drive i have put the old drive int the new one but it will not boot up can you help me with a step by step yours THANKS. When installing an old hard drive in a new computer,does the old operating system need to be removed? Both are xp home with sp2. I would like to take this Hdd and place it in my new computer.

This will be the only HDD I will be using. I have been told that it is hard to do. I think the person who told me this is just trying to scare me into paying him to do it. Is it possible to install the drive into the new computer and use it after I reinstall the OS? Please help me. Tell me what I should do to make this work.

Any ideas? This article was very helpful. The comments posted were also very helpful. I succeeded in putting the hard drive from an older computer into my Windows XP. It worked without me having to configure any settings on the PC. I just connected the power and pin cables and set the jumpers. I set the original XP hard drive to Master and the older hard drive as a Slave. When I started the computer again it started as usual. When I went to My computer it had the added hard drive listed.

Thank You. I have a related question. I have everything working on the old PC except that it is an old machine. I simply want to get more speed and do not want to reconfigure the OS. Old computer hard windows xp, new has vista. Leo, I have enjoyed your newsletter for years, and am happy to be able to contribute something for your other readers. I have had great success in using a USB 2. It eliminates the need to open your computer to install the old hard-drive.

The adapter allows you to access the old hard-drive from your new computer as an external disk. The cost for the adapter is less than I have no connection to this Company, except as a satisfied customer. Best to you and yours. I often have to add a drive to a computer on a temporary basis.

Perfect for transferring data from an old hard drive. My old computer pentium4,2. The motherboard failed. I rebuilt it using new components pentium core2duo, 2. My old ide hard drive was fine so I put in in the box and made it a slave to the sata drive.

I loaded my original win xp-pro and my original office pro I made outlook express the default mail client. I tried your suggestion of downloading ie from the microsoft website, but that did not solve the problem. I tried a system restore and that did not solve the problem. I have been able to read and copy most of my data files to the old hdd to the new. I found the old address book and I copied it to the desktop, removed the read-only attribute in the properties view, but still get the error message that the address book file has been locked by another application that I am supposed to close.

But nothing else is open. I cannot find the old emails and where they are stored. I have no idea how to proceed from here. Thanks for any input. Ok I have an adapter, connected it.

Can someone enlighten me? It simply shows up in my hardware manager and nowhere else. I was using Linux, on my old pc. Could this be the problem?

All my info is in my old PC. It died suddenly. The hard drive is not bad. I can hear it spinning. I need a lil help my old emachines motherboard crashed or shorted or something, instead of buyin a mother board I decided to buy a new comp for just bucks more or so. With out damaging my new computer or the old hard drive?..

I too transfered my Seagate Barracuda I removed the jumper that was on the HDD. My computr recognizes the HDD but none of the files I had on the drive pictures, music, etc.

Where are all my files??? I want to change my old hard drive into my new laptop , it is possible to swap it and make it work smoothly,i did it before with win 95 , it worked just right but with windows xp the new computer does not read the drive.. I put in my old hard, I can see it as drive F.

I can open it and see the folders and stuff. I can seem to copy my MS office to the new hard drive. How do I do that? The problem is there are only 40 gigs, my old drive has 80 gigs. Can i just switch this out? The 80 gig drive has XP but it is under a system restore no discs.

Is this even possible? I build my first PC with a Vista 64 ops system and everything is working fine. I feel comfortable about transfering files and I have them on a network drive as well but my question is on the installed software. Please help! I have an old computeer with W98; it has a memory problem and i need the data on that HD; any way to tranfer or hook up the HD with a USb adapter?

Much of what I have is pics that my wife will kill for! I am too yourng to die. I have a hard drive from a broken computer, windows xp. I bought an enclosure and connected to my lap top via USB 2. Is there a work around? So I was wondering if i could just install The hard drive from my old computer onto the new one. Or would it just be easier just to buy a new hard drive and OS? Now open your PCs case using whichever method your computer uses..

Well then, how to transfer hard drive to new computer without reinstalling Windows? You can continue to see below and get the stepwise guide. It supports "Disk Clone", " System Clone ", "Partition Clone", and the first one is to clone entire hard drive, including all the content on it, thus you can keep the customized operating system as well as your personal data, programs, etc.

If it is a digital or volume license, you can use it on another computer. If not, you need to make more effort, namely, uninstall and reinstall the license. In the first of place, please download this software and install it on the new computer. Step 1. Install old hard drive as second drive in the new computer. Completely shutdown the computer, open the host using screwdriver and then connect the old hard drive internally with power cable and SATA slot.

Step 2. Step 3. Select the old hard drive as the source disk here is disk 0 and click Next. Step 4. Thanks for your feedback. Thanks Jim. This thread is locked. You can follow the question or vote as helpful, but you cannot reply to this thread. I have the same question Report abuse. Details required :. Cancel Submit. Kapil Arya [Directly]. Let us know if this helps! How satisfied are you with this reply?