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.
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
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. Posted by Guardian 2000 (Member # 743) on :
Not mental but depending on relative ages you may be looking at IDE/PATA versus SATA.
Unless the drive is clicking or otherwise making mechanical indications it isn't toast, most likely. The diag thing is probably on the drive.
And yes, Windows hardware abstraction gets pissy if you try to swap the drive from one PC to a totally different one.
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
Right, I forgot about the PATA vs SATA thing, haven't used a PATA drive since... 2006?
Posted by Hobbes (Member # 138) on :
My previous laptop had a harddrive failure. Pretty much killed it and I bought a new laptop.
Posted by Saltah'na (Member # 33) on :
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.
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