Switching Hard Drive to a different computer

[twyckoff]

Hello, My main computer crashed when I tried to update my graphics card. I am ok with using my other computer until I get a entire new system. However, there are some files ( and space) that I would like to get from my crashed hard drive.
Both computers run XP, both have IDE. I do not need the operating system off the crashed hard drive. Can I simply add the hard drive to the other computer so that I can access both the disc space and my files?
Reading different articles I read a lot about making one a slave, is this easily doable?

 

[tomatthe]

There should be a jumper on the hard drive that you can move to put it in slave mode. Basically you want a Master and a Slave drive per IDE cable. Very likely they are both currently set to master, and you would need to set the jumper on the drive you pulled from your broken system as slave then attach it to the same cable the drive is on in the working computer.

 

[Hawkeye22]

Some older WD drives had a jumper for "single". If this is one of those drives, you'll have to move the jumper on the OS drive from single to master.

 

[twyckoff]

Thank you both for the reply. It looks simple enough that a computer amateur like me can do it.