Getting Stuff Off Another Harddrive

[Cygnus12]

I have an HP Pavilion 720n and I want to get some files off my old computers hard drive. The computer only has one place to put a hard drive so I simply switched it with the other and was going to burn all the stuff I needed onto a disc. Well, it didn't want to start windows, but at a computer store not long before that, they were able to get files for my sister so I know it's not corrupted or damaged.

I have two questions now:
1: The new HP has no cable to connect 2 hard drives, but the old computer does. If I took that cable, put it in the HP, and set the old HD to "slave" could it work? Or would the computer not be able to handle the extra hard drive and short out or in any way damage my computer.

Now if there is no problem with question 1 heres question 2: How would I be able to secure the second drive since there is no place for it? Or would it be impossible?

Thanks

 

[Trotter]

#1- Yes, it ought to work if set to slave.

#2- Without a cage or rails I wouldn't try to mount it. To get your files I would hook up the drive and leave the case open. Once the files were transfered, I'd power down, remove the old drive and cable, restore the original, and button it up.

 

[AND_YOU_ARE]

To answer your first question, you should be able to do what you described. Typically most motherboard have two ide channels ( which is what a hard drive and cdrom plugs into, with a ribon cable) So most motherboard allow four devices.

If you dont want to mess around by switching the ribon cables you could hook the hard drive up in place of the cdrom or dvdrom drive.

 

[Trotter]

If you dont want to mess around by switching the ribon cables you could hook the hard drive up in place of the cdrom or dvdrom drive.

Oooo...I didn't think about that one. But would that screw it up since the HD is from a differently configured computer?

 

[AND_YOU_ARE]

No it wouldnt, The pc only boots off of one hard drive at a time. You can have more than one hard drive in a pc. I constanly switch one of my hard drive in and out of other computers.

For the OP, just make sure that the hard drive you want to get file off of is made a slave and wont boot off of. This can be done in the bios.

 

[Cygnus12]

Thanks a lot!

 

[Apokalipse]

most motherboards should have at least 2 IDE channels, each can hold 2 drives (making a total of 4 drives)
if your system has the hard drive and CD drive on the one cable, I would suggest getting another cable (they don't cost much) then plug the cable into the motherboard , poutting the CD drive on this as master, then put the old hard drive on the first cable as slave to your current hard drive