Moving data off of a old computer.

[Forian]

I have an old computer which has been broken for the past few years. When booted up it was extremely slow and would crash after a short while. I am now buying a new computer as i do not wish to repair it. However I would like the files on the old computer to be on my new one. I do not think backing up the old hard drive to an external drive will work as it will probably switch off before it completes. The new computer will have space for multiple hard drives, but only buying one for the moment.

Thank you for any help you may have.

 

[Hawkeye22]

How was it broken? Bad motherboard? Dead PSU? If there was no problem with the drive, you can simply install it in the new computer and it should show up properly. If not, go into disk management and assign the drive a letter then it should show up.

This is assuming you have a windows OS on each computer.

 

[Forian]

How was it broken? Bad motherboard? Dead PSU? If there was no problem with the drive, you can simply install it in the new computer and it should show up properly. If not, go into disk management and assign the drive a letter then it should show up.

This is assuming you have a windows OS on each computer.

Either heating issues or PSU, I'm not sure, but the hard drive itself should be fine. The old pc ran windows xp, the new one will either be 7 or 8.1 depending on what i get.

 

[Hawkeye22]

If the old drive had windows on it, you can safely delete the windows folder to make more room on that old drive. Keep the files & folder you need and remove the rest.

 

[Forian]

If the old drive had windows on it, you can safely delete the windows folder to make more room on that old drive. Keep the files & folder you need and remove the rest.

Is it fairly easy to remove and install a hard drive into a new machine? I don't have much experience upgrading or building computers.

 

[Hawkeye22]

It should be fairly simple. Make sure the power is off. Mount the drive into an empty slot. Connect the power connector from the power supply. Connect a sata cable from the motherboard to the hard drive. You can use the sata cable that is currently connected to the hard drive. Just disconnect it from the old motherboard.

I'm sure there are plenty of videos on youtube that can show how to do it.