Are these hard-drive ports the same?

Apr 8, 2018
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Tomorrow I'm going to buy a second hand PC. I'm bringing my hard-drive along with me to test it out, but I'm not sure if the SATA inputs are the same on his and my hard-drive. Here are the models:



Sellers hard-drive: TOSHIBA DT01ACA100


My hard-drive model: Seagate Desktop HDD ST1000DM003 1TB



Please get back to me ASAP.

Thanks.

 
Solution
Yes, both regular SATA drives.

But what are you planning on doing with your HDD in his system?
What type of "testing"?

Unless you have a Linux OS installed on that drive, a Windows OS is unlikely to actually boot up in different hardware.

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
Yes, both regular SATA drives.

But what are you planning on doing with your HDD in his system?
What type of "testing"?

Unless you have a Linux OS installed on that drive, a Windows OS is unlikely to actually boot up in different hardware.
 
Solution
Apr 8, 2018
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I'm just checking that it will boot up, and I'll be able to access all of my files.

Now, regarding you saying Windows OS is unlikely to boot up in different hardware, how can I fix that?
 

Only way to ensure everything boots up and functions properly is by reinstalling OS on your HDD from new hardware.

If this second hand pc already has HDD with OS, then you can connect your HDD as secondary and still access your files.
 
Apr 8, 2018
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What about accessing the BIOS and re-configuring from there? I don't want to have to do any of this because I have important files on my PC.
 
Apr 8, 2018
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Will I still be able to boot into Windows though?
 

RobCrezz

Expert
Ambassador


Might do. Sometimes windows will just crash and bluescreen when the hardware is different. othertimes it will still boot up and install the drivers.

No gaurentees.
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator


Booting up the drive and OS from a different machine?
That is a 100% maybe.

If you plug your drive+OS into a different machine and hope to boot from it...it may work, it may fail completely.
It might even bork up the install so that you can't even boot it up when you put it back into its original PC.

Don't do this with a drive that has a single copy of "important files".
 
Another "No-No" of plugging your drive as secondary: You don't know the state of the OS already on that PC. If there's a virus / ransomware on it, you're risking spreading that virus onto your hard drive, or even losing your data.

Prepare Windows Install DVD (download it from Microsoft) on a spare USB drive. Make that PC boot off that USB drive. If Windows setup proceeds, and seller agrees to kill the existing hard drive (or you brought yourself a blank one to try), you might be confident that said PC is probably OK.

Confirming that GPU (if any) is functional will be much more difficult.