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General discussion

HD from one machine to another?

Mar 11, 2005 3:22AM PST

I have a 80gig WD hd in my current machine running as drive D, no OS just files, mainly photos.

New machine next week has a 200gig sata drive as standard and I would like to just swap the 80g straight into the new machine. Is this just a simple "bolt it out, bolt it in and switch on" or are there likely to be other complications to be aware of?

mtia,

Denis

Discussion is locked

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Not normally a problem
Mar 11, 2005 8:53AM PST

If your 80 gig is formatted such that the OS on your new rig can access it, you should be ok. If it has a drive overlay used to work around a size limitation from the old machine, this could be trouble, however. I presume this is an IDE drive. Just set the jumpers properly for the cable you will be using.

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jumpers on both drives...
Mar 11, 2005 1:43PM PST

Remember to change jumper settings on both drives, not just one. The OS drive should be changed from "Single" to "Master," and the stroage one from "Single" to "Slave."

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Since the poster said the new drive is SATA
Mar 11, 2005 8:04PM PST

it does not have jumpers.

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Thanks all.........
Mar 14, 2005 7:54AM PST

Sorry for delay in coming back. The old machine is becoming more unstable by the day/hour! and currently isn't recognizing either of my HD's for around 15-20 tries and then suddenly boots as if nothing was wrong. I'm praying that this is either the mobo or power unit and both drives are ok in themselves. New machine tomorrow so fingers crossed. Lets hope the 80g goes in ok with auto recognition. It was installed on this machine using WD's 'Data Lifeguard' so I hope that doesn't add complications.

Denis.

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HD interface.
Mar 19, 2005 10:56AM PST

Your new is SATA. What's the old HD interface?

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EIDE........
Mar 21, 2005 7:18AM PST

I think!........, basically just a standard pre SATA drive. Just plugged it into the blue HD primary connector and it was recognised immediately, formatting, progs, files and all. Well.......nearly all. It was partitioned as 3 drives but the new machine only sees two. The third was only 5gb so the loss is unimportant as I only used it for a Photoshop cashe disk anyway, strange though!

Denis