PC crash

[LordKOTL]

What problems will I create by taking the hard rive from my old PC and putting it in the new one? Will it autimatically be a slave drive and appear as ther D drive?



Both PCs ran windows 7.



Is it simply plugging the hard drive into the new computer, connecting the cables and booting it up and presto all my old files are available to be transferred?

Depends. If the drive is an IDE/PATA drive you might want to make sure it's set to Master and is using the right plug on the cable ribbon, along with making sure you actually have an ATA port on your motherboard (any new PC would likley be using SATA). If the drive is SATA, it's partially plug N play, just plug it in. The only thing you'll have to do in either scenario is go into the BIOS and make sure that the drive you want to boot from is set as the 1st bootable hard drive in the boot order.

 

[MassHavoc]

Don't forget the master slave pin setup, don't they still do that?

 

[LordKOTL]

Don't forget the master slave pin setup, don't they still do that?

Nope. That as only IDE/PATA. SATA is pretty much plug and play; you just need a SATA port free and a power cable. About the only jumper switch I've ever seen on a SATA drive is for limiting it to SATA I speeds

 

[winos5]

So the BIOS I do as it boots, just hit the right command prompts and make sure the old hard drive boots second, not primary.

 

[LordKOTL]

It would actually depend on the BIOS installed on the motherboard. There are usually 2+ different keys that you can hit at bootup[sup]1[/sup]. You'll want the one to get you into the BIOS setup. Once in there, you'll have to look around for something that says "boot order" or similar (don't mess with anything else unless you know what you're doing). Then, you want to set the drive you want to boot[sup]2[/sup] from in the top slot or uppermost HDD slot[sup]3[/sup].



[sup]1[/sup] - Nowadays motherboard will have a key to enter setup, a key for a one-time boot drive select, and one for other BIOS commands. Usually you can permanently set the boot disk under the main BIOS setup. Sometimes, though you have to do it through the boot drive select.



[sup]2[/sup] - It would be a good idea to make note of the names that all of your disk drives come up with in the BIOS. It's usually some cryptic sequence of digits with little or no semblance of a name or other identifying information.



[sup]3[/sup] - Most normal users have the 1st boot disk set as their bootable hard drive. Some (like me) have it as a USB or a Disc drive (CD/DVD/BD) so they can boot something alternative at startup. If the bios finds no bootable USB drive or no bootable disc drives it usually defaults to the first listed HD. Either way you di it make sure that the HDD you want to boot from is listed as the 1st HDD, if not the 1st drive.

 

[winos5]

If the already installed SATA drive is the primary, would installing a second SATA somehow mess with the boot order? Wouldn't the fisrt drive by default boot 1st?

 

[TSD]

If the already installed SATA drive is the primary, would installing a second SATA somehow mess with the boot order? Wouldn't the fisrt drive by default boot 1st?

It shouldnt. but may as well check. and regardless it shouldnt "break" anything even if its in the wrong order it more than likely just wouldnt boot windows (even if your other drive has windows on it, the configuration may be different enough where it wont boot) and you would need to switch the order.

 

[LordKOTL]

If the already installed SATA drive is the primary, would installing a second SATA somehow mess with the boot order? Wouldn't the fisrt drive by default boot 1st?

It shouldnt. but may as well check. and regardless it shouldnt "break" anything even if its in the wrong order it more than likely just wouldnt boot windows (even if your other drive has windows on it, the configuration may be different enough where it wont boot) and you would need to switch the order.

I think it depends on the BIOS. Some determine intial boot order by the channel information. It could possibly hose the boot order if the drive you *don't* want to boot from is on a lower (i.e. closer to 0) SATA channel than the one you do want to boot from, and given that it's a pre-built computer, you're likely running a BIOS that is not as "open" as one for a build-it-yourself motherboard and the trained marmoset they had building the machine has the SATA channel something like 5 or 6 and you plug in the hard drive you don't want to boot from as 3-4. Either way, you'd want to check the BIOS to be sure.



And TSD: I actually made that mistake once...I didn't check the boot order when I was wanting to wipe an old PATA drive and to my surprise (since PATAs are enumerated before SATAs) my machine booted into an old install of XP as opposed to Win7. It didn't hose anything but it was frustrating.

 

[~rabid platypus~]

The boot order interface will depend on the BIOS version. But, your first HDD you put in will always be the first boot drive until you manually change it.



Does that computer have mainboard graphics, or do you use a seperate video card?



Another possibility that I didn't see mentioned is the CPU could be toast as well.



Try booting with one stick of RAM, mainboard graphics if possible, and that's it.

 

[jakobeast]

My cats breath smells like cat food.

 

[MassHavoc]

OOHhh they have the internet on computers now....

 

[jakobeast]

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