Moving hard drive to another comp without hassle?

Zaphod B

Probably a silly question, but is it possible to take a standard internal hard drive, with files and everything, from one computer and install it in another computer without going thru partitioning and everything? The reason I'm asking is I have a desktop with 2 hard drives - 160 and 60 Gig - at one location and another comp with a 120Gb drive at another, and I want to move everything on the 60-Gigger to the other computer just by moving the drive itself. Can this be done (dons fez..) just like that?

Ta for any help

forbairt

is the 60 gb ... the main system disk ... ??

has it applications installed on that drive ...

it should be fairly straight forward if its just used for data ... move it to the other computer ...

edit: you could also do what I did sunday .. get yourself an external usb enclosure ... damn handy .. make sure both pc's have usb2 though or else it'll take a year or two to copy...

Zaphod B

No the drive just holds all my music and a bunch of documents. So the new computer will recognise it? I don't need to format or partition it or anything?

That USB enclosure sounds like a pretty good idea. How much did it set you back?

Thanks, Z

forbairt

it was 60~ EUR in maplin ...
its one of their specials at the moment ...

you can get others possibley cheaper and stuff but this was ideal for me .. as I'd a 40 gb disk and no free spaces to put it ...

so far its working great ...

you could try http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=123721&cks=PRL
45 EUR ... + add on 10 for postage .. on the order .. and a week or so to deliver ...

or as I did pop into maplin and grab it there and then

its fast enough for me ... was something like a 350 mb file .. wrote to it in 10 seconds or thereabouts ...

and this way you don't have to **** about opening up the pc everytime you want to transfer files ...

forbairt

2000 and xp should recognise it no hastle ...
95 has issues no doubt .. and 98 needs to have software installed ...

this pops up as a drive on every machine I've connected it to so far ...
2000 pro ... and 2 xp pro machines not tested on linux ...

jor el

Getting the USB enclosure is probably not a bad idea if you're not confidant about opening up the PC and such. But since you need to open one to get the disk out anyway it's not too hard to install it in the other. When you take out the 60G from PC1, it'll probably be set to slave. There's a jumper on the back of the disk to set Master (MA) Slave (SL) or Cable select (CS). The wording sometime's varies, Maxtor and Seagate normally have wierd jumper configurations whereas Western Digital just have the 3 listed.

If it's set to slave, then simply plug it into the 2nd PC on the same cable as the existing 120G drive. Power on and you should see the new drive. Then copy off all your files.

davie_b

jor_el said it in one should be as simple as that!.....
.......unless you like to do things arse about face like i do.....
l.o.l.

forbairt

I'll still recommend my method if you've got the few quid to spare .. its easy enough to swap in and out drives but just a lot of hastle everytime .. this way you've got a 60 gb portable disk with a little bit of protection from the enclosure

Tazz T

I did it recently. Built a new machine, took the HD from the old machine and whacked it in. XP did the rest searching through the drivers and what have you. No problems whatsoever.

Zaphod B

Hmm at that price I can't really justify it, since I don't transfer files that often I'll probably just install the drive itself, copy the files and remove it again. The hardware aspect doesn't worry me too much (although it would do if I'd actually replaced the side of my case after the last time - getting it open is so damn hard you'd think it contained Nazi gold rather than computer components). I just wasn't sure if it was as simple as installing it as a slave, but that seems to be the case. Thanks for all the advice.

Actually since I'm too lazy to start a new topic and you all seem pretty knowledgable on the subject, perhaps someone can help me with another problem. The 160Gb drive on the older computer is partitioned into 4; for system, games, music and random stuff. I did it after installing the drive, using Partition Magic. The problem is, the computer acts as if there are actually 4 different drives; in other words copying files from one to another takes forever. Is this normal with hard drive partitions, or have I done something wrong?

Thanks again, Z

forbairt

to best of my knowledge its like copying them off the disk and back on ...

if you cut and paste files on one partition .. into itself only a few bytes are changes .. as in the location ... however if you move them onto a different partition .. it has to take all the data from there and move it to the next partition which is requiring read and writes of all the data

edit: ... the usb enclosure made sense in my case cus of hastle of opening up 3 different pc's when I want to copy stuff...