Long story short, PC that runs my big CNC decided it just wouldn’t turn on. Not sure why. JVG gave me another PC to use that should suffice for the time being, however I would like to try and get the user parameter files off the HD here so I can copy them to the other PC.
Question is can I remove the HD from the busted PC and install it into the other PC in place of the one in that, and turn it on long enough to copy the two files I need to a flash drive?
Both use XP Pro OS, busted pc is an emachines(gateway), donated one is a Dell…
I know I can get an external HD case and do it that way but I’m looking to see if this is something I can do right now.
When you load Windows, it should go through the new hardware wizard and then the old drives partition(s) should appear in your My Computer.
If the drive is old (IDE) you may have to mess with cable arrangement and master/slave pin selection, but otherwise I do this every day at work. Or did rather, I do server support now not helpdesk/desktop.
When I built my current desktop, I yanked the drive out of my old machine and plugged it in in addition to the drive for the new machine. Basically just kept the drive for the new machine for booting the OS, and used the old drive for files (it had my entire movie collection on it, a ton of school work, and a bunch of game saves).
If all you need to do is copy some files, hook them both up, and browse the old drive through windows explorer likes its a flash drive or external hard disk (it will just show up under “computer”.
Good point. I forgot about that because I haven’t touched an AMD machine in probably 10 years. I’m an Intel fanboi all the way :lol and luckily my company is all Intel.
Well I put the damn thing into the PC and it asked that I activate the windows OS on it via the internet through MS.
If I put this thing into the computer as a slave(set jumper on main HD as master and the one on this as slave), and hook up the ribbon cables accordingly(cable is printed with HD#1/HD#2 near the connectors) is that all that’s necessary to make this HD run as a secondary in this PC? Essentially as stated, like looking through a flash drive plugged into the PC…
Do I have to go into bios and activate anything for the slave drive to work? I think the files that I have saved onto the backup flash drive are current as they have the settings for the limit switches, which I believe I setup after I did all the other movement calibrations(IE i tell it to move eight feet over on the X axis and it moves exactly 8 feet)
Just sucks that this had to happen right now, when I’m like a ball hair close to getting into production runs here and have my hands tied up. And I refuse to bring my uber computer to the shop to takes it’s place as if that one gets fucked up I’m going to go ballistic. Luckily the actual driver software runs on very minimal requirements
Depending on the machine, you should be able to just hook up the HDD and use it as a seconday without any real fucking around.
If it’s asking to activate windows, you can always use the product key on the side/back of the computer, most OEM machines have the windows product sticker on them unelss it fell/peeled off…
It would need to be tested, but I’ve got 2 gigs of corsair XMS from my old machine that I’m pretty sure are PC3200. Power supply crapped out when it was plugged in during hurricane irene. I’ve been meaning to bring that machine back to life to use as a media center or to have to play games while my good machine is at school, but I’ve got one semester of school left, and I really have no idea what I’d do with it when I get an apartment.
It was a dinosaur, but it ran portal 2 and fallout 3 on medium settings.
The only thing you may have to change in the BIOS after plugging the drive is in if someone disabled the BIOS from seeing more than one IDE drive, etc. Just simply enable it and good to go. Otherwise, yeah, just make sure everything is connected properly as slave and you should be in business.