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Moving a HDD to a different machine.

C

Crimzon

Senior member
Heya,

I need to move a HDD from one machine to another. The problem is that the new machine already has a hdd installed, and everything. So I want to know what the proper procedure would be. The existing HDD is SCSI, if that matters any. I want to continue booting off that HDD and everything. The HDD from the old computer is being moved over just to keep all the data, and so I don't have to reinstall everything on it.

Thanks.

 
I did exactly that yesterday. I moved from a T-Bird machine to a straight Athlon machine with a spare HDD that was all set up and running with XP Pro. It took a couple of reboots to fix things like a duplicate network name and some new hardware found, but after that, it was perfect. Of course, it was another IDE drive. If the #2 computer in your case already has SCSI, that would help.
 
Well, I was told I would have to start up the 1st computer in safe mode, and get rid of as many drivers as possible. Even though I won't be booting off this IDE HDD, it still has windows 98 installed on it, and computer I'd be moving it to (with the SCSI drive) is running win2k or xp... can't remeber right now. I don't want to create any conflicts between the OS's, and once the IDE is installed, I want to make sure all the programs on it will work, but the new OS won't have all the registry files right?
 
You really shouldn't have to do anything. As long as you continue to boot off your existing hd, just add the other drive to the system and boot up. It's that simple. I assume you have your bios set to boot from scsi (your existing hd), and the drive you want to move is IDE. (If both drives are scsi please indicate that, as it changes the situation a bit.) Even though your IDE is bootable, your machine will not be confused because it is set to boot from scsi.

You only get into a more complicated situation when you want to move a hd from one machine to another, and continue to boot from that same hard drive. Then it gets more complex, because the hard drive and it's OS now finds itself in a new "enviroment", where it has to recognize new devices, etc. But you're not doing that, so no problem.

I also assume the OS on both drives is the same, or has the same file system. If your IDE drive is win2k with an ntfs file system, and you move it to a win 98 system (with fat32), your OS would not be able to see any of the files on the ntfs drive.

WebDude
 
i remember having some troubles by having two bootable drives in my comp, but i think you just need to go to the bios, check if it has detected the drives ok, and then make sure the first boot drive is set to the scsi drive. snoop around in the bios and you should find the settings.

if it still complains, just load the IDE drive in DOS on the old comp, delete some of the boot files on c:\ and rename the windows dir, then it should def. be fine.
 
Hmm, alright. I'll check all that and put it in. Yeah, if I wasn't clear, machince I'm putting HDD into is booting off the SCSI and is FAT32, I'm not quite sure on the OS. The HDD itself is IDE, FAT32, and has Win98 on it.

So I think I'm pretty clear on how to put it in, and make sure the computer boots off of the SCSI drive. And once the IDE drive is inside, I'll be able to access info on it just fine. Will there be a problem with all the programs installed on the IDE drive? Since I'm running them from a different (I think) OS? Will they run properly? I want to get rid of the OS on the IDE drive, once it's in the other computer, but I still want all the installed programs to work (Quicken, Photoshop, things like that). Or do I just have to sit down and reinstall everything again?

Thanks for the replies!
 
you'll run into trouble since a lot of programs require some registry entries to run.....so the SCSI hdd's OS won't recognize the progs on the IDE hdd as being installed.

i always just reinstall most big stuff when i reformat and reinstall windows. but a lot of small programs don't require registry and installation procedures, winamp for example. so you can just copy them over. but a bunch of games and apps from big corps (like ms) won't work....just reinstall.
 
Sigh, damn, that's what I was trying to avoid. Since some of those have information backed up (saved files, settings). I guess I'll just copy the folders to the SCSCI, reformat the other drive, and reinstall, and hopefully copying the data backups over will make everything run like new.
 
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