Computer people - hard drive question...

[sqhertz 5,000+ posts]

i have a hard drive from one of my older computers with a bunch of crap on it. cant remember if it was infected with viruses or if my power supply took a ****. either way , would i be able to swap that out with the HD thats in this computer and see whats on it without ****ing anything up on it if it does have teh infectionz?

//content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/confused.gif.e820e0216602db4765798ac39d28caa9.gif

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[grimreper912003 5,000+ posts]

is the hard drive IDE or Sata?

Is the motherboard IDE or Sata?

Does the "infected" hard drive have an operating system?

 

[sqhertz 5,000+ posts]

is the hard drive IDE or Sata?
Is the motherboard IDE or Sata?

Does the "infected" hard drive have an operating system?

i believe both are IDE. im not good with computers , but thats my guess. both HD's have windows xp pro...

 

[sqhertz 5,000+ posts]

im on AIM if anyone wants to help me there...

 

[JimJ 5,000+ posts]

It's not going to hurt anything.

 

[sqhertz 5,000+ posts]

It's not going to hurt anything.

thanks.

grimreper helped me out on AIM. i should be good now. //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/smile.gif.1ebc41e1811405b213edfc4622c41e27.gif

 

[bass_lover1 10+ year member]

It's not going to hurt anything.

Unless all the OP did was replace the "faulty" HDD and everything else on the PC is the same, it's not going to boot.

What I'm saying is, a HDD from another PC, will not boot with different hardware. You need to make sure both disks are on cable select (on the jumper), your current HDD should be on the master plug on the IDE cable, then put the old HDD on slave. Boot into your current OS, then you should be able to access the old one through windows explorer.

 

[Scoobydoo 5,000+ posts]

Unless all the OP did was replace the "faulty" HDD and everything else on the PC is the same, it's not going to boot.
What I'm saying is, a HDD from another PC, will not boot with different hardware. You need to make sure both disks are on cable select (on the jumper), your current HDD should be on the master plug on the IDE cable, then put the old HDD on slave. Boot into your current OS, then you should be able to access the old one through windows explorer.

or put it on a different channel, which is probably what he did

he wants to retrieve the data not boot from it

 

[bds0688 10+ year member]

And it will boot, just not be stable.

 

[bass_lover1 10+ year member]

or put it on a different channel, which is probably what he did
he wants to retrieve the data not boot from it

He made it sound like he wanted to swap the new one out for the old one, it doesn't work like that, AFAIK, it wont work very well, if at all.

 

[bass_lover1 10+ year member]

And it will boot, just not be stable.

Possibly, I've only seen the black screen saying "windows has detected major hardware changes" or something of that nature, once or twice. I don't recall if you can go any further past this screen, you're probably correct though.

 

[Scoobydoo 5,000+ posts]

it might boot, but you wont have the proper drivers so it will be unstable as hell and windows will be going through the "looking for new drivers" crap for a while