Conclusion On Old Hard Drive - If you have purchased a new computer because your system has become problematic now, then you must be worried about what can be done with the old hard drive.The old drive can still be installed in your newer system as an external drive.This external drive will serve the purpose of backing up of data.
I was using Windows 98 desktop system since 2 years, but since it was troubling a lot so I purchased a new system in which I have installed Windows XP.I wanted to know if I can somehow use my old computer’s hard drive in my new computer system.How can I install old drive as a second or external drive in the new system ?
Old Hard Drives
- The old internal drive of your old system can be made to act as a secondary or external drive if you have bought a new computer having hard disk capacity in Terabytes.
- The best use of an external drive comes out when you are performing hard drive wipe and reintall of operating system.
- It serves as a tank for storing data.You can also save old computer’s data in your external drive.
- External drives can serve numerous purposes.Some of them are -
- For backing up of data.
- For transferring large files.
- For saving files from an unbootable disk.
- For extending your storage space of your system.
Old Computer Hard Drive
- It is possible to shift all your data from the old computer’s hard drive to your new computer’s hard drive.
- You can clone the old hard drive to a new one by doing cloning steps.
- You can use the old HDD in a new computer as a slave.But make sure that the first partition of the old drive (C:drive of old disk) will be shown as a D:drive in a new computer.
- For making your hard drive a slave , always remember to setup the Jumper settings inside the cabinet.
- Jumper is a small device which is attached to one of the 5 slots present in a hard drive.If the jumper is fixed to any of the extreme-left or extreme-right slot of your hard disk then the drive will behave as a slave while if it is fixedin any of the middle 3 slots then the drive will behave as a master or primary.
Old Hard Drive new Computer
- Old drive enables you to save your confidential data like credit card numbers and passwords etc. from hackers, by providing a second back up drive to your new computer.
- First of all, open the computer case by unplugging all the power cables and search here for the physical hard drive.It is a metal case of 4 by 6 inches in width.This is a place where all your data resides.
- After identifying your physical HDD disconnect all the cables connecting it to a motherboard.The cables can be of 2 kinds – broad ribbon data cables and thin rubber cable.
- The hard drives which use a ribbon data cable for connecting to a motherboard are called PATA cables or Parallel ATA cables while the disk is called the PATA Hard disk.
- Hard drives which use a exterior rubber cable ( having thickness of a pencil ) for connecting to a motherboard are called SATA cables or Serial ATA cables while the disk is called the SATA Hard disk.
Copy old Hard Drive
- You can easily clone your old hard drive to a new one and can save all your data from losing.
- First, you must know the difference between SATA and PATA Hard drives.SATA drives are faster while it can be possible that your old drive is a traditional PATA drive.
- Some optical drives like DVD burners and CD readers are still having PATA specification while SATA works differently with each motherboard.But, still it is possible to use both SATA and PATA drives with the same primary controller.
- Old PATA hard drive can be connected to a new SATA drive on the primary controller with one optical drives.But, if your computer has 2 optical drives then you must connect your old PATA drive to a primary controller in someway.Some motherboards did’nt allow this to happen.
- However, if both old and new hard drives are SATA drives then you can simply connect the old one as a slave inside the new computer.
Incoming search terms:
- install the old hard disk in the new computer
- old hard drives
- old harddrive
