Question Need Help Booting Into Old Drive I Just Replaced...

[John_485]

My old drive is a OCZ 120gb Trion 2.5" SSD and I'm running Windows 10. I want to hook the SATA cable back up and boot to the old OS. How do I do that, I just installed a new M.2 drive last night but need access to the old system drive? I imagine after plugging in the old drive, I'll boot into the BIOS and hopefully the machine will automatically let me choose which disk I want to boot from?

If I'm wrong I'd appreciate a step by step by step on what I'll need to do. My mobo is an MSI Z170A Gaming M5.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thank you,

John.

 

[USAFRet]

The system is running off the new M.2 drive and it runs OK?

You shouldn't need to boot from the old drive to get files from it.

 

[John_485]

Why would you reply just to tell me what I shouldn't need to do? If you can help me, cool, if not, that's okay too. It's obvious I need some files off the old drive, I'm just not sure if I have to boot up with that drive or if the new drive will recognize it (as a slave I suppose) when I plug the SATA cable back in? Thanks.

 

[USAFRet]

Assuming the system runs OK from the new drive...it does...
The old drive should just be seen as a secondary drive. Another drive letter.
(the concept of 'slave drive' went out years ago)

It should just appear as a different drive letter.


Just be sure of what SATA port configurations are allowed with your motherboard.
Most boards turn off one or more SATA ports when using an M.2 drive.
Your user manual will outline this.

 

[John_485]

(the concept of 'slave drive' went out years ago) - Haha! Yeah I know, it's all I could think of at the time, sorry about that. Yes, the new drive works fine. I used the M.2_1 slot on my board (MSI Z170A Gaming M5) which luckily, doesn't disable any of the SATA ports, so I should be fine. I apologize if my first comment was a little salty, I was stressing over something yesterday and shouldn't have been rude to you.

Thanks, I'll tell you how things go once I'm done.

-John.