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Just a little hard drive help

C

CT2TXtech

Banned
Hey guys,

I am trying to save a hard drive from my 2nd system. I am upgrading the CPU and the motherboard, but i want to use the same hard drive as I need some of that info. Now the motherboard that i am currently using, the Floppy and both IDE channels are dead, so i can t save anything to floppy or CDRW. My question is when i move over to the new CPU and motherboard, how can i save everything on my hard drive when i put a new OS on there. I am going to put XP prof on that new system. I dont want to reformat my drive as we all know what happens then.
Suggestions, help.

THanks
 
Damn, how'd you kill all your ports?

Your options are pretty limited. Your best bet may be to get a USB or Firewire enclosure to put the CDRW in, and use that to back up the files you want to save. Even if you don't want to keep the drive in that afterwards, they can be useful just to have handy.

If you can network with another computer for a short time, you can back up files to a shared folder.

You can also use a tool such as "fips" which comes with Linux install discs (you can run just the program, without having to install Linux) to resize the partition. It works similar to Partition Magic. That way you have blank space on the drive to install XP to. Or you could get Partition Magic or another commercial utility, with the downloadable install option for the purchase of course.

Another possibility is to simply do nothing. You can install XP to the hard drive without affecting your existing files. You can either set up a dual-boot, or just install it to a different directory than your current Windows folder and later delete the old Windows files. Files that go into places like Program Files will be overwritten by the XP versions, but your data files will be safe. This of course is a dirty install, since there will be lots of things leftover from the old Windows that you don't know you can delete.
 
Well YEAH. But that's less usable afterwards. 🙂 I figured by now he'd have gotten a controller if he wanted to do that.

Heck, are you even sure the hard drive's data is any good? Anything that killed all your ports probably wasn't too nice for the magnetic data.
 
Just put the old hdd in the new system and boot up to it. Don't install a new OS until you've saved the data onto floppy or whatever.
 
Apparently you've never tried that. For one thing: floppy? I don't think there's enough of a "floppy disk emergency reserve" for most people to back up all their files before a format. Second, Windows just hates booting up in a new system. So you either end up fighting to get the drivers working, or you just end up blue-screening and can't do anything.
 
I'm confused about what problem you're having with saving your files... you said your 2nd computer died... so stick the hard drive in your main computer, copy all the files you need to that hard drive, then you have them again. If you want them on the other computer, just transfer them over the LAN (I assume you have them networked since you have 2 computers)... or if you don't have a LAN, burn it on CD's and then copy to the other computer.
 
Well i am trying to network them. i stuck a nic card in the 2nd pc to do so, thats when i realized that the floppy port is dead. so i cant network them right now. i cant email to myself, because we dont have a phone line, we just use cellular. And I cannot install a burner for the same reason, that IDE port is dead too. I am going to put a new board and a new CPU in, but i want to save whats on the drive. If i connect the old drive to the main PC, i just turn the old drive into a slave? Does it matter that theres 98 on the 2nd system and XP Pro on the main one.
So just stick in the hard drive as a slave, change the hard drive in the main pc to master, then just move over what i need to the master hard drive. is this correct? THanks for help
 
Yeah, just stick the old drive in your main PC as the slave and copy the files you need. OS's won't be a problem since it'll look at your primary master IDE device first, find the boot record, and boot to that.
 
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