Are hard discs standard size?

Jacey53

My computer tower seems to be on it's way out, but the hard disc is as lively as ever.

Could i just buy a tower and insert my hard disc? Would it have to be the same model or same make or are they all a standard physical size?

Jacey

DatabaseError

the physical side of HDDs is regular, at 3.5 inches for desktop drives, 2.5 for laptop ones (though SSD are 2.5 and used in each)
Your biggest problem isn't size, it's
1. compatibility - drives are generally IDE (older) or SATA (newer)...you need to ensure your old drive matches the requirements of your new PC
2. Drivers conflicts. Dropping a HDD with an OS installation (windows?) into a new PC throws up ball kinds of problems, much easier just re-installing windows
..unless the plan is to use the old drive as a slave..just for dragging the saved data off?

googler

You could buy a new tower and install your current disk as a secondary drive (assuming you buy the tower with a primary HDD installed and with an Operating System installed.

You can get IDE/SATA adaptors from Maplin and other computer suppliers if (for instance) you have an IDE and you buy a tower with a SATA primary.

google "installing secondary hard drive"
"adding secondary drive desktop"
or variants

Browntoa

also google "cloning hard drives" as you will need to copy windows over from the old drive

FireFox

Errr... what's wrong with the tower?
(MSE Rule No1 ?!?!)

A.Penny.Saved

You won't be able to use the same Windows install on a new PC so you will have to re-install all your software. The drivers will not be compatible with the new PC and attempting to re-use windows installs creates too many problems to even think about doing it unless the motherboard chipsets and CPU are the same.

You can access the drive to access any data you have on it. Once you have copied everything off the drive, it might be worth re-partitioning it as a Logical drive taking up all the drive space. That will only be necessary if Windows is installed on a smaller Primary partition which it might not be. It could be on one large Primary partition, data and windows which isn't an ideal choice as it makes re-installing windows more difficult.

If you copy all the required data from the windows partition you could create a smaller Primary partition and larger Logical partition and then re-install windows onto the smaller Primary as a backup in case anything happens making the original Windows install none functional..

lucylucky

^^^Of course you don't need to use Windows.

JasX

Browntoa seems confused, otherwise the above advice is good.

Hard drives come in 2 standard sizes 2.5" and 3.5" (basically laptop size or desktop size)

you can easilly put a 2.5" drive into a 3.5" slot in a desktop with some cheap (<£1) brackets and this is very standard.

The same drives can be put in external cases/caddies/enclosures and used as an external hard drive, 2.5" drives can be USB powered like this but a 3.5" drive will always need a separate power supply (typically mains)

Other than size drives can come with 2 different types of connector IDE (lots of pins, slowest access speed, 2.5" and 3.5" drives have different numbers of pins so you need an adapter to put a 2.5" drive into a larger slot ->£2 ebay job again) or SATA connectors (L-shaped socket and no 'pins') which comes in different speed ratings, SATA1/150 or SATA2/300, but will almost always 'work' but at the slowest available speed if there is a mismatch.

you can get a connector to convert between a SATA drive and an IDE drive (but make sure it is designed to convert in the correct direction -cheap on ebay again).

If you are reusing an old drive best to copy off what you want to keep, format it, then copy back only what you want to keep to get rid of all the fluff takign up space (eg old operating system and system files etc)