posted
So I got home after work last night and sat down at my computer. It was acting a bit sluggish, so I decided to reboot it.
Unfortunately, after it shut down I couldn't get it to boot all the way back up again. I managed to run a diagnostic on it, and determined that the hard drive is toast. Everything else seems to be fine, though.
Now, I've got an older computer that has been sitting around doing pretty much nothing. It's got a perfectly decent hard drive in it, it's just that the RAM and processor aren't so good.
So... Am I mental to be considering opening up the computers and putting the good hard drive from the old computer in the newer computer so I can still enjoy the better RAM and processor? The owners manuals show how to to do it step by step. If this is a decent idea, is there anything I should be bearing in mind while doing so?
And we're talking putting the hard drive from a Dell Dimension 8200 into a Dell XPS 420.
-------------------- "Kirito? I killed a thing and now it says I have XPs! Is that bad? Am I dying?"
-Asuna, Episode 2, Sword Art Online Abridged
Registered: Mar 1999
| IP: Logged
posted
Hard drives are pretty much the same so physically, there should be no problem with that. But doesn't Windows tend to barf when you make radical changes to hardware? That's out of my experience.
Hope you had a backup of your data, too.
-------------------- “Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.” — Isaac Asimov Star Trek Minutiae | Memory Alpha
Registered: Nov 2000
| IP: Logged
posted
Right, I forgot about the PATA vs SATA thing, haven't used a PATA drive since... 2006?
-------------------- “Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.” — Isaac Asimov Star Trek Minutiae | Memory Alpha
Registered: Nov 2000
| IP: Logged
posted
My previous laptop had a harddrive failure. Pretty much killed it and I bought a new laptop.
-------------------- I'm slightly annoyed at Hobbes' rather rude decision to be much more attractive than me though. That's just rude. - PsyLiam, Oct 27, 2005.
Registered: May 1999
| IP: Logged
Saltah'na
Chinese Canadian, or 75% Commie Bastard.
Member # 33
posted
1) Generally, it's the hard drive that's being transplanted that has issues with new hardware as it is the one that has to deal with it. Regardless, the rule of thumb is that you need to reinstall Windows if and when you change the HDD on your computer.
2) This also depends on the chipset of the motherboards in question. If both are the same (i.e. Intel Chipsets) and you are running Windows XP, that OS does give you a bit of leeway on what you can do. There is no leeway on Windows Vista and newer, and also doesn't apply if the chipset is different (i.e. swapping from Intel to AMD).
3) How old is your computer? Hard drives in general aren't that expensive. A decent 500GB hard drive will cost you around $50 if you know where to look.
-------------------- "And slowly, you come to realize, it's all as it should be, you can only do so much. If you're game enough, you could place your trust in me. For the love of life, there's a tradeoff, we could lose it all but we'll go down fighting...." - David Sylvian FreeSpace 2, the greatest space sim of all time, now remastered!
Registered: Mar 1999
| IP: Logged
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
Printer-friendly view of this topic
