Question Second harddrive

Feb 4, 2009
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I have a 128GB SSD from an old AMD system that I rage quit on.

I’d like to use that harddrive in another machine that already has windows installed. Old AMD machine doesn’t power on easily, I’d like to disconnect the hard drive and just plug it into the other machine.
Not worried about loosing data, Will there be a problem with plugging the amd HD into the other machine since each drive will have a copy of Windows on it?
 

Muadib

Lifer
May 30, 2000
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How the heck do you rage quit on a drive?:D To answer your question, you have to go into the bios and make sure the drive you want to use is set as the boot drive.
 

VirtualLarry

No Lifer
Aug 25, 2001
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I've "Rage quit" on a few keyboards before. Never on a HDD or SSD, though. Although, I agree, the FX-6300 (compared to today's CPUs), is a PoS.

Edit: If you just want to re-use the drive, without any sort of "drive letter interference" with an existing system, you can make a bootable USB flash drive with Linux Mint (www.linuxmint.com), and then boot the Linux USB drive, with the SSD in question wired up, and then use the "Disks" tool, to re-format / re-partition or wipe the drive. You can even, if you get adventurous, look up "hdparm secure erase tutorial" scripts, and use "sudo hdparm" and manually do a Secure Erase on the SSD. (Recommended, but... be careful not to wipe or lock the wrong drive. I would disconnect all other drives before attempting this.)

Edit: You can basically use a Windows 10 USB (use Microsoft Media Creation Tool to make) boot stick to do the same thing under Windows.
 
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Arkaign

Lifer
Oct 27, 2006
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What Larry said. Although if you're going to throw this in as a second drive, there's a good way to clean this inside windows after you have it connected and you've booted up with your usual C drive.

Run elevated command prompt (hit windows key on keyboard, type cmd, right click the command prompt that appears in the start menu, and select run as administrator)

Type diskpart, enter
Type list disk, enter
Note which drive the 120GB SSD is, probably 1 or 2, but if you have many drives it could be higher
Type select disk 1 (or whatever number you saw in list disk), enter
Type clean
Type exit, enter, exit, enter

Run disk management, initialize disk, and then you can put a totally clean partition on it.

This is useful for reclaiming old drives that had previous OEM or Windows installs on, because otherwise very often garbage partitions will remain, and windows disk management will refuse to let you remove them.
 
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Feb 4, 2009
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Wait, there is one excel file on it that would be nice to recover.
Are you all saying I could plug the old amd FX drive into another PC and recover that file?
 

Arkaign

Lifer
Oct 27, 2006
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Wait, there is one excel file on it that would be nice to recover.
Are you all saying I could plug the old amd FX drive into another PC and recover that file?

Yes, you should be able to easily do so.

You will browse to it after booting, it will assign a drive letter to it such as D or E, and from there go look in :

Drive Letter\Users\Username\Documents

Or etc\Desktop, etc\Downloads, etc.

When you first open the profile folder inside Users, it will ask about taking ownership of the files, just say yes and wait for it to complete the process. If it hangs, you will have to do it manually, and depending on which version of Windows you have this varies slightly.

At that point Google your OS and 'take file ownership' eg; 'Windows 10 Professional take file ownership' to find the steps that match your setup.
 

VirtualLarry

No Lifer
Aug 25, 2001
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Or use a Linux LiveUSB, and access your old Windows drive that way, and not need to worry about permissions.
 

aigomorla

CPU, Cases&Cooling Mod PC Gaming Mod Elite Member
Super Moderator
Sep 28, 2005
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Wait, there is one excel file on it that would be nice to recover.
Are you all saying I could plug the old amd FX drive into another PC and recover that file?

if you had a PW on the FX machine windows, it may prove difficult as when you try to do as Arkaigan states, it will say you lack permission. Usually the easiest solution is swollow that rage one last time, boot it up from the FX machine, and then copy the data required, then throw the machine out the window.
:D

If you had no PW on the old machine then as Arkaign states, you can pull that data off on any PC, or even a USB enclosure.
 
Feb 4, 2009
34,553
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if you had a PW on the FX machine windows, it may prove difficult as when you try to do as Arkaigan states, it will say you lack permission. Usually the easiest solution is swollow that rage one last time, boot it up from the FX machine, and then copy the data required, then throw the machine out the window.
:D

If you had no PW on the old machine then as Arkaign states, you can pull that data off on any PC, or even a USB enclosure.

It’s making me rage again. Machine did have a password.

I plugged it (the FX ssd drive) into an old intel machine I have that has become problematic (approaching 10 years old).
Now I’m having boot to black screen problems again with the intel machine.

Grrr....grrr

I feel like Bela Legosi

*language within the link so I did not embed*

*all YouTube like embed??*

[Link removed]

So you decided to post it anyways? o_O
Leave movie clips that have nothing to do with
tech posts (especially ones with
profanity in the title) for the social forums.

AT Mod Usandthem
 
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aigomorla

CPU, Cases&Cooling Mod PC Gaming Mod Elite Member
Super Moderator
Sep 28, 2005
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are you sure you intel machine is not trying to boot from the SSD and not its original primary HDD?

You can not move windows over from one machine to another via hdd unless the hardware is identical.
Even then you can run into some issues.

Make sure your boot order is correct and bios is not setting the SSD from the FX as primary boot.
 
Feb 4, 2009
34,553
15,766
136
are you sure you intel machine is not trying to boot from the SSD and not its original primary HDD?

You can not move windows over from one machine to another via hdd unless the hardware is identical.
Even then you can run into some issues.

Make sure your boot order is correct and bios is not setting the SSD from the FX as primary boot.

Update:

Followed what @VirtualLarry suggested in another thread.
I changed the cmos battery.
Old girl powered up instantly.
I was able to access the FX machines drive, Wife was elusive about which files were needed so I signed up for Acronis and I am backing up the whole drive to be safe.

Found a friend that can use the FX memory, I’ll use it’s old ssd or maybe make that the boot drive on the wife’s new system.
Maybe eBay the rest.
So happy to close the book on that FX system been a pos from day one.