how to install old hard drive in new pc?

timster123

My old pc's motherboard died so i took my hard drive out and new i'm looking to install it in a new second hand tower.
i did try just plugging it in and on but it wouldn't show, so i assume i have to change some sort of setting in the boot screen?
I have a lot of important stuff on the hard drive so i just didn't want to muck it up.
appreciate any help

System

You shouldn't really have to do anything at all but you do need to give Windows time to detect it and install it. However sometimes SATA channels not used are turned off in the BIOS by some of the more obsessive PC owners and given its second hand that may be the case so you may need to renable them.

I have a lot of important stuff on the hard drive so i just didn't want to muck it up.

Obviously not that important or you'd have backups so it wouldn't matter. Onedrive and Google Drive are free and will even automatically back up stuff placed in the respective folders.

timster123

Tarambor wrote: »

You shouldn't really have to do anything at all but you do need to give Windows time to detect it and install it. However sometimes SATA channels not used are turned off in the BIOS by some of the more obsessive PC owners and given its second hand that may be the case so you may need to renable them.


Obviously not that important or you'd have backups so it wouldn't matter. Onedrive and Google Drive are free and will even automatically back up stuff placed in the respective folders.

Thanks for the help, could probobly do without the lecture though!

spud17

Just to get things straight.
I hope you're not just putting the old hard drive into the 'new' pc as the main drive and expecting it to work?
Adding it as a second disk shouldn't present any problems.

timster123

spud17 wrote: »

Just to get things straight.
I hope you're not just putting the old hard drive into the 'new' pc as the main drive and expecting it to work?

Well, could you elaborate on why that is ridiculous?

Mr.Generous

is it on a narrow SATA lead or the old approx 2" wide IDE ribbon lead? If its IDE you will need to set the jumper to SL or slave from its previous MASTER setting. If you have trouble with auto detection search Disk Management on your pc and you will find all the tools you need.

Mr.Generous

It wont work as a master in the new pc, windows will fail to load as an anti piracy measure to stop users loading windows onto drives then transfering the drive and thus cloning the OS.

timster123

Mr.Generous wrote: »

It wont work as a master in the new pc, windows will fail to load as an anti piracy measure to stop users loading windows onto drives then transfering the drive and thus cloning the OS.

Ah ok, that's the problem then i guess.
If i took it into a computer shop could they do anything else but transfer the data onto a usb stick?

Mr.Generous

you can load a new copy of windows onto the drive and keep all previous data, docs, pictures, music etc will all be all right, but any programmes installed wont run unless they are re installed in the new OS.

bsod

you need to be clear about what you've got, and what you're plugging where to get a useful answer. Alternatively, google has indexed 23 million answers to this question.

if you have a fully working/booting windows machine (with it's own hard disk), a usb hard disk enclosure might be useful

if you reinstall windows over the top of this disk, that could result in the opposite of what you're trying to achieve

esuhl

If you've added the old drive as a secondary one, you probably just need to boot into the BIOS/UEFI and make sure that the PC is set to boot from the right drive.

If you're trying to use the old drive as the only one in the PC, from which you boot Windows, this probably won't work due to hardware/driver differences.

The easiest thing to do would be to get a new hard drive, install Windows on that, then copy the data you want to keep from the old drive.