Old Hard Drive

[littlestone33]

Hi everyone, my old pc gave up the ghost last week when I dropped a screw driver onto the motherboard while adding some extra ram. I took out my hard drive as it had my windows 10 and all my old files on it. I then bought myself another second hand pc which had a small hard drive but no operating system. I took out the small hard drive and installed my old one and tried to boot it up but every time I did this my mouse and keyboard would not work. I really need to get my old hard drive working 'cause all my files, contacts, emails are on it. Has anyone got any ideas that might help me. Thanks Tom

 

[Mr Hat]

Hmm, this is not gonna be easy I think. 2.5 inch drives have got other power consumption than 3.5 inch drives. Try to connect another SATA power cable. I hope this helps :/

 

[CountMike]

Transferring windows system disk to another computer rarely works right.
Do you have both drives connected ? If so, you can make a USB with live Linux on it, boot of it and transfer needed files to new disk.
You can also install same OS on new drive.

 

[Someone Somewhere]

You can't boot that install of Windows on another PC, due to both licensing and driver issues. You'd need to re-install Windows, and probably on another HDD if you don't want to overwrite that drive.

How was Win10 installed on the old PC? Through the upgrade? Do you have a product key for some version of Windows, and did you buy it separately or did it come with the PC?

Booting off a Linux LiveCD will at least get your files back, but contacts and emails could be more difficult.

 

[smorizio]

as the hardware not the same you have to do a dirty fix. try using f8 safe mode. if you get in you can remove all the old device drivers and then reboot and let windows install the newest ones. use a hirem boot cd and min xp on it..then move your files to another drive.

 

[jsmithepa]

I really need to get my old hard drive working 'cause all my files, contacts, emails are on it. Has anyone got any ideas that might help me. Thanks Tom

User data is not a problem, the problem is OS, can't boot old OS on new machine.

So install OS on new HD, hook up old HD as secondary, BAM!

 

[littlestone33]

Thank you everyone for your replies. Just to clarify, I think its a 3.5 drive. It measures 4"x 6" and its a Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 300 Gbytes. I also bought the exact same pc as the old one which was a Dell Optiplex 745 thinking that it was just a case of swapping over the hard drives. What would stop the mouse and keyboard to stop working as soon as windows starts to load. I get an option to try a fix but can't get the mouse or keyboard to get me down to the accept solution and enter suggestion. Still puzzled.

 

[jsmithepa]

Technically if it's the same exact PC it should work, am guessing Dell switched some stuff around. How do you buy a Dell without OS? If this is a RMA replacement, contact Dell as the procedure for moving your stuff over.

 

[littlestone33]

hello everyone, now sorted, bought myself a caddy and managed to get info off my old hard drive. bye for now 'till the next time!

 

[Mr Hat]

hello everyone, now sorted, bought myself a caddy and managed to get info off my old hard drive. bye for now 'till the next time!

Nice! Though I haven't given the solution to this problem, people greatly appreciate selecting the best answer. Thank you!