Following a strange non operation of the PC this morning (PSU most likely...no fan operation) have removed the hard drive and tempory fitted to a new machine in place of the cd rom/dvd

 

I can access all the data ok and have started transfering files, folders and images that I need. However this is going to take days at this rate, is there any way I can store the whole contents of my old hard drive to my new pc hard drive? so that I can remove it from the new machine and either access the data as I need it or transfer it as I need it rather than having the old drive hanging out of my new machine for days?

 

My new machine has a much much bigger hard drive so space is not a problem, but the old drive been connected is, as it leaves me with no cd rom at the moment any help please!!

 

Jeff TT

Non-expert opinion - IIRC, you should have a two IDE channels and can have a master and slave on each one. So you should be able to have up to 4 devices (HDD / CD).

 

So keep your new large HDD as master boot and you've still got 3 spare IDE "places" to put your other HDD and also your CD and even a CD writer.

 

I've done this before with no probs - just needs a good local PC guru / shop to take the flack when it goes wrong!

 

Or - bite the bullet and start to copy everything you want from the old small one to the new big one - just leave it going over night and fingers crossed!

 

Cheers - Gio

there will usually be a jumper (not the wooly type) you'll need to move on the drive to tell it to be a slave.

 

If you try both hard drives on the same channel as is chances are the PC won't boot. If you can't find the jumper on the old hard drive, change the one on your CD(it should be labelled at the back) and have the old hard drive and CD share the second channel.

 

And yes, I'm another member that works in IT :D

If only you had bought the lap top....................

 

:D

 

Matty.

Originally posted by Gio

Non-expert opinion - IIRC, you should have a two IDE channels and can have a master and slave on each one. So you should be able to have up to 4 devices (HDD / CD).

 

So keep your new large HDD as master boot and you've still got 3 spare IDE "places" to put your other HDD and also your CD and even a CD writer.

 

I've done this before with no probs - just needs a good local PC guru / shop to take the flack when it goes wrong!

 

Or - bite the bullet and start to copy everything you want from the old small one to the new big one - just leave it going over night and fingers crossed!

 

Cheers - Gio

 

This is exactly how mine is set up.

 

Jeff, did you get it sorted?

It seem that as the system is booting and you are transferring files, all you need to do is put a new folder on the new drive and copy the whole of the contents of the old drive to it.

 

 

Go into My Computer

Click on the drive you you want to copy to to open it. Right click in the open white space and select New - Folder. This creates a new folder on the new drive.

 

Click on the drive you want to copy from to open it

Click edit - select all from the top menu

Right hand click on one of the files and select Copy

 

Right click on your new folder and select paste. This will copy the contents of the old drive to the new one

 

Best of luck