old hard drive in new machine

Friends PC has broken. He uses Autocad and a few other expensive programs. The Win XP PC he is using keeps cutting out. Narrowed it down to either the board or cpu. As it's quite old he wants to buy a new PC and put the hard drive out of this into the new one.


a) will this work - I guess Windows will have a hissy fit but can you simply update the drivers?

b) will the programs work?

C) the drive is IDE - most new machines are now SATA. Can you get a sata to IDE convertor and do these work?


thanks

 

Depends what machine the HD is in at the moment. If it's a Hewlett Packard, he'll have right problems (as I found when my heap of silicon packed in) HAd a new motherboard and memory , but the HD didn't like it one bit. Apparently HP link the hD to the motherboard with hidden soft/hardware. Even changing the MB for the same type makes the HD hissy fit. It can be done though.
Perhaps your mate should just buy a new computer and link the HD via a IDE-usb adaptor cable, then copy the files he needs over to the new one.

 

it's just a bog standard home build machine with intel board and chip. if he put the HD into another machine I dont think the programs would work? Would they?
He does not have the disc for Autocad etc so cant reinstall.

thanks

 

Hard to call this, as Windows has a 3 strikes and you are out policy. ie three items of hardware changed, then the hdisk won't boot anymore. So fitting a hdisk into a new system is doable, but not practical. Best to reinstall the drive, as a second drive, in a similar system, recover the data, then reinstall on a new machine. SATA - IDE convertors are available, or get an external drive enclosure to install the HD via USB, from Maplin etc..remember to reinstall the jumpers on the hdisk for it to be recognised.

 

If Windows XP was an OEM version, it is not transferable to a new MB. If he can lay his hands on a full version of XP, maybe he can talk the nice folk at Microsoft activation to re-activate his old copy.

Perhaps you could use Norton Ghost to transfer the old PATA drive's contents to the new SATA drive.

Simplest solution is to look for a matching second-hand PC.

 

you could always use something like Acronis (http://www.acronis.co.uk/) to clone the hard drive that has all your valuable data/ software then use the clone drive you just created, build/ buy a new computer connect the cloned drive up, let XP boot, when it does it will proably complain that it doenst have the correct drivers, install the new drivers for the new board an the jobs a good un

and you still have the original disk as a back up!!

 

When building a new machine I would advise a fresh install of the operating system.

The best thing you can do is build the new machine with a NEW Hard drive. then use the hard drive out the old machine as a second HDD and get the data from it.

I would never use a HDD on a old system in a new one. You can get it to function but the driver compatibility and issues you will get are in no way worth the hassle.

 

This is also my case. I have lots of expensive programs like adobe flash and others to my hard drive. My hard drive is IDE and the new PC I have now is sata.I'm afraid all my files will be erased and I don't know how to use this to the new PC. I'll follow the guide here. I'll be back after I've made this. Thanks a lot for the help.




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Unless the pc is the same- you cannot just drop a new (old) hdd in and expect it to work.

The requisite drivers will not be there, especially the sata drivers that might be needed.

I don't think that you will even be able to safe mode it.

You can use software to find the important serial numbers and then you could grab a torrent version of the (possibly out of date) software

eg SIW.exe will find many of your serial numbers (free from gtopala.com)

http://www.gtopala.com/download/siw.exe

advice on how to torrent at

http://www.imaginarynumber.co.uk/utorrent

use pirateBay etc to look for the software that you need - eg autocad