Heartland

Okay, I have a new computer with a nice new hard drive inside, and an old hard drive I wish to put inside the new computer as a slave hard drive.

"No problem BoF!" I thought, but the hard drive I want to install has a corrupted Windows file on it and the computer it was in before wouldn't boot up properly because of this. This hard drive also has a lot of precious music on it which I would like to transfer onto the new hard drive that came with the computer.

The question is - can I put the old hard drive with the music on into my new computer, copy the music files I want over to my new hard drive and then format the old hard drive and keep it installed as a spare?

Thanks

Brideoffrankenstein wrote:Okay, I have a new computer with a nice new hard drive inside, and an old hard drive I wish to put inside the new computer as a slave hard drive.

"No problem BoF!" I thought, but the hard drive I want to install has a corrupted Windows file on it and the computer it was in before wouldn't boot up properly because of this. This hard drive also has a lot of precious music on it which I would like to transfer onto the new hard drive that came with the computer.

The question is - can I put the old hard drive with the music on into my new computer, copy the music files I want over to my new hard drive and then format the old hard drive and keep it installed as a spare?

Thanks

Yes. 2 options:

1. Change the jumpers on the back of the old hard drive to Slave, and make sure that you have the drives wired up in the computer so it goes and looks at the new drive first. Make sure also that the new drive is set to Master (this is starting to sound more and more like the Puppet/Muppet Show...). Now you can just play around in the slave, rescue the music, copy it over, reformat the old HD, copy the music back and then you have 2 hard drives, one for applications and one for stuff storage.

2. If you're not comfortable playing around in the guts of your shiny new machine, spend about 20 (dollar or pounds) on a hard-drive enclosure, pop the old HD into it (remember to set it for Slave - you know, maybe it's not Depeche Mode, perhaps it's Blake's 7), hook it up to one of the USB ports of the new computer. It should recognise it as a removable drive, then you can rescue the music and reformat it. If you do it this way, you then have a removable portable hard drive that you can take with you without having to take the whole PC along. Sometimes useful.

Hope this helps.

Should be easy enough assuming the old hard drive does not play up - the PC should just boot as normal from the main drive and Windoze should just pick it up.

Usually an additional drive needs the jumper settings at the back changed from Master to Slave (fnar..), so the PC/BIOS knows how to treat it.

"Every internal hard drive has a jumper setting, which is usually located in the center at the back of the hard drive, or in between the IDE data transfer connection and power supply.

A jumper is a small connector that connects two pins together. There are two standard modes for jumper settings, which are Master and Slave."

Just Google the make and model of the drive for the settings!

Give me a shout if I can help more...

EvilBastard wrote: 2. If you're not comfortable playing around in the guts of your shiny new machine, spend about 20 (dollar or pounds) on a hard-drive enclosure, pop the old HD into it (remember to set it for Slave - you know, maybe it's not Depeche Mode, perhaps it's Blake's 7), hook it up to one of the USB ports of the new computer. It should recognise it as a removable drive, then you can rescue the music and reformat it. If you do it this way, you then have a removable portable hard drive that you can take with you without having to take the whole PC along. Sometimes useful.

That sounds quite cool but I haven't got a USB connector wire for it, though I do have a hard drive enclosure.

I went into the computer shop near me and described the problem (but without the corrupted file gubbins) and they said they would connect it all up for me tomorrow

I know which bits are which and what I have to do but I would rather someone professional does it

Thanks EvilBastard and Zuma

music to my ears! (literally!)

On that note about using the old drive as a backup or second HD, I'd rather not do that...

You have, as you say yerself, a shiny brand new machine, and you are going to spoil it with adding an ol' bastard of a drive, with corrupted stuff on.

It will slow down your system, and might even corrupt it (errors here and there etc...)

Or am I too paranoid here?

IZ.

Izzy HaveMercy wrote:On that note about using the old drive as a backup or second HD, I'd rather not do that...

You have, as you say yerself, a shiny brand new machine, and you are going to spoil it with adding an ol' bastard of a drive, with corrupted stuff on.

It will slow down your system, and might even corrupt it (errors here and there etc...)

Or am I too paranoid here?

IZ.

If you format it and wipe it clean it shouldn't pose any problems. I agree with you about putting ol' bastards into new cases, though - I've got a pile of old drives that live in enclosures and hook up via USB, but I only use them for content rather than applications (music, video), ie non-critical stuff. Stuff is backed up on DVD, but it's nice to have 100gb of music sitting there rather than having to trawl through a pile of CDs.

The hard drive with the corrupted stuff on isn't that old - only about 6 months

Argh do I install it or not then?

How do I get a USB wire thing for it or do you have to buy it as an external drive to start with?

Brideoffrankenstein wrote:The hard drive with the corrupted stuff on isn't that old - only about 6 months

Argh do I install it or not then?

How do I get a USB wire thing for it or do you have to buy it as an external drive to start with?

Your external enclosure should have come with a USB cable, but if it didn't or the USB cable has found work elsewhere, you can pick them up quite cheaply at your local computer shoppe. They plug straight into the back of the enclosure - the back of it should look something like this:
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications ... 1&NoMapp=0
where you can see the input for the USB cable and the power cord.

I'm guessing from your use of "gubbins" that you're english (the sepos don't understand it when I say it) - check out these guys for nice prices on enclosures and other gubbins that is useful:

www.microdirect.co.uk/

The main advantages to having an external HD is that you can take it with you, and that you can turn it off in case you don't want it having secret conversations with your other drives (I'm convinced that this happens late at night, so I turn them off - maybe *I'm* paranoid! )

Thanks

I've got an internal enclosure thing as the computer only has one hard drive bay so I bought an enclosure you can put inside as I didn't know that you could get enclosures for a hard drive that you already have to use externally.

With an external enclosure I assume it is just a matter of putting the hard drive inside it and plugging it into the USB socket?

I think that sounds more my thing

Just found this

http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?Mod ... e&doy=22m2

Is 2.5 inches the standard size for a hard drive?

Brideoffrankenstein wrote:Thanks

I've got an internal enclosure thing as the computer only has one hard drive bay so I bought an enclosure you can put inside as I didn't know that you could get enclosures for a hard drive that you already have to use externally.

With an external enclosure I assume it is just a matter of putting the hard drive inside it and plugging it into the USB socket?

I think that sounds more my thing

No, 2.5" is standard for laptop harddrives and That Guitarist's [ahem]. you need a 3.5" enclosure - something like this:

http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?Mod ... s&doy=22m2

Yep, it's that simple - open the enclosure, you'll see a ribbon cable in there with an IDE plug on the end of it (wide flat thing). You'll also see a power cable (small funny shaped thing). Plug both cables into the back of the drive (they'll only go in one way), put the enclosure back together. There should be a power lead with a big fcuk-off black adaptor on one end in the box that the enclosure came in. Plug one end into the wall (I miss 3-pin plugs) and the other into the back of the enclosure. then take the USB cable and connect it to the USB port on the computer and the one on the enclosure.
When you flick the switch on the back of the enclosure, the computer should recognise it as a "removable storage device" - and you're off to the races.

Wahey!

Right I shall get me one of those as I don't like myself or other people poking around inside my computer (I get a bit jumpy as someone dislodged and killed my graphics card once)



Thanks!

alternatively, nah!
I won't say it...








it was Mad Cyril, not me

I've heard it said that a secondary hard disk
storing backup data is more reliable
(ie. less prone to loss) than data backed up
onto dvds.
Can anymore verify this?

Also, is it generally safer to backup data
onto a *removable* secondary HD, like the usb
device you have been describing, than it
is to backup data onto an internal secondary
HD that's spinning all day long (?) comments?

James Blast wrote:alternatively, nah!
I won't say it...








it was Mad Cyril, not me

Ocean Moves wrote:I've heard it said that a secondary hard disk
storing backup data is more reliable
(ie. less prone to loss) than data backed up
onto dvds.
Can anymore verify this?

Also, is it generally safer to backup data
onto a *removable* secondary HD, like the usb
device you have been describing, than it
is to backup data onto an internal secondary
HD that's spinning all day long (?) comments?

HDD's fail, it's a fact of life backup to DVD then store the DVD properly and it'll be there if ever needed.

wether the disk is removable or not, you still have the same disk, depends on how well you treat it. I use RAID5 in work and on my home machine, this stripes the data with parity so if 1 disk fails you can simply replace the failed disk and the data will be rebuilt using the parity info. But you may need to go out and buy a RAID controller if your motherboard doesn't support RAID, also with RAID5 you'll need at least 3 disks of the same size, to a maximum of 32 disks.