Computer help hard drive

[strangeland2]

Can I take a hard drive out of one comp and just plug it into a new comp with out causing any problems? I fried a mother board on my old comp and Im tired of it sitting in my living room but i want to check the hard drive and get rid of the old comp. They are both Dell xps.

[woodsguy]

Yea, it should be fine. I've done it a few times.

[strangeland2]

any chance I ll be able to run both hard drives or will i have to remove the new one? Im hoping if there is anything on the old one i ll be able to save it to the new one.

[strangeland2]

Damn different connections. Any chance of their being adapters?

[woodsguy]

What are the connections? If the old drive is sata and the new comp doesn't have sata then you are probably out of luck. If it is the other way around and the new comp is sata and the old drive is ata the new comp should have ata as well. You will probably have to hook the new drive to ata in order to have the second drive as a slave drive (I'm not sure, I've never mixed sata and ata). If you can get it hooked up with ata you just have look up the jumper configuration for your drive to set them up as master and slave.

If you can't get them hooked up you can also try getting a drive enclosure and hook up the old drive via usb. They are only about $20.

Edit: You can find external drive enclosures for under $20. ATA drives are also called IDE or Ultra ATA.

[MTBME]

I would take the old drive and configure it as a slave to the new computer. That way you still have access to the files you want and you get the better performance with the new drive in the new computer. (less defrag etc.) But it sounds like you might have a different problem.

[strangeland2]

I bought a universal drive adapter so now I got it hooked up to the computer but apparently in the old comp I had it password protected and now i cant get into it. So Im up to problem number 3 DOHHH