Can I just move my HD over from old comp?

[1nspired]

Hey, I just finished plugging everything in, including my HD from my old computer. The only time I have turned it on was when I built it outside of the box (with only 1 mem, vid card, 4 power connections, and cpu). When I turned it on that time it gave me the boot disk failure error, so I assumed everything was ok and turned it off and put everything in the case. Now, I'm about to power it up and see how many things are wrong But, I first wanted to see if it was ok that I was putting my unformatted old HD in. Also, what do I do now (assuming old HD is ok)? Thanks.

[CPDMF]

If your old board was a NF4 board you can install the hard drive without too much effort, otherwise you are going to have to format and reinstall windows..

[1nspired]

it wasn't an NF4 board, it was really old. I bought a new HD though. I'll hook that one up. Is there a way that I can plug the old one in as a slave? I need to get some stuff off of it, but it still has windows on it and I can't format it. Or will having xp on both harddrives cause a conflict?

 

Also, if I just plug the new one in for now, I power it up and then what do I do? Do I have to mess with the bios or anything or do I just stick the windows CD in and format it?

[supershanks]

Install xp on your new drive.

Boot from the xp cd Windows should see your new drive & let u partition & format it. Use the default format not the quick (its only quick cos it doesn't check 4 errors.

 

When install is complete plug in your old drive.

Enter bios & make sure your new drive appears at the top of the hard disk boot order.

you should now be able to boot up & access the data from your old hd.

 

luck

[1nspired]

cool, thanks a lot

[GalacticS]

Please post a signiture with complete hardware spec's. I'm assuming both hard drives (new and old) are IDE and not SATA. If your using IDE then the stock bios settings should be just fine. I would recommend flashing your bios (I'm using the 6/23). After that you can probably just run the windows cd, format the new hard drive and install windows. When you are up and running, shut down and plug in your old hard drive. It should come up as another local drive (e,f,g...). You can then use explorer to get whatever files you need and transfer them to your c: drive.

 

Stock bios settings should be fine, but it's always nice to check and make sure the board is reading your cpu, ram, etc...

(Usually auto setting will work fine, you can always tweak later).

[1nspired]

thanks for the info galatics, ill update the sig. and yes both are ide. not sure how to flash the bios, ill look for a sticky.

[1nspired]

Well, when I turned it on, everything starts running (i think, cpu fan and case fans etc) and I see 4 red led lights. however, nothing shows up on my monitor and I dont hear any beeps. Any suggestions? Thanks.

[yahooad]

look at the manual

 

4 red lights are an error

[1nspired]

yeah, its not recognizing the CPU I believe :confused: Any idea what I can do?

[Sharp]

Hello,

 

Did you plug all 4 power connectors into the board?

# Floppy one under the cpu socket

# Hard drive one on top the chipset fan

[NetMavrik]

To answer your original question about whether or not you can get your older hard drive from another computer to boot up in a newer configuration, the answer is yes. The real question you should have asked is whether or not you should, and the answer is no.

 

Your older drive will have many references to drivers and Plug-N-Play hardware ids that are no longer valid on your new configuration. You will experience weird issues, lockups and slowdowns unless you address those. I have done it several times in order to improve my skills with Windows, but it isn't worth it. You have quite alot of work to do anyway to get your computer working, you may as well spend the time and do it right.

 

Don't screw up a nice config with a FUBARed windows installation.

 

Just my two cents.