Installing HD from another Computer

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My computers power supply went bad and it is cheaper to purchase another computer than it is to repair or replace this computers power supply. My Question is as follows: Both computers were purchased at Dell Computers and both have ata hard drives. My old computer drive is a sata drive and i am not sure about the new one being sata or not. The old computer is running windows 7 ultimate and the new one will be windows 7 home, can i install the old computers hard drive into the new computer, and use both drives as well as both operating systems, dual booting from different drives? If so how would i go about doing this? If not could i at least install the old systems drive and get the info from it some way so i wouldn’t loose everything on it? Your help woulkd be appreciated, Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

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I don’t believe you can install the old HD in the new machine and dual boot, but you can slave the old drive into the new computer as a secondary drive and then move your data to your new HD.

After that, you can format the old drive (I’d wait a month or so to be sure you have EVERYTHING you want to keep off the old drive) and use it for data storage, image backups or whatever you need storage space for.

BTW – How did youget a new Dell computer with Windows 7 installed for less than the price of a new power supply for the old system ??

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DocWatson, Thanks for your quick reply. The old computer is a XPS Gen 5 which 4 years ago was very costly. The Power supply covers the entire bottom of the tower and is hardwired into the computer without any plugs. They do not sell it any more and so it would have to be troubleshot and repaired on a component basis. and of course they will not give me any schematics for the purposes of troubleshooting. I have already ordered the new tower and so it is a mute point anyway.

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DocWatson, Thanks for your quick reply. The old computer is a XPS Gen 5 which 4 years ago was very costly. The Power supply covers the entire bottom of the tower and is hardwired into the computer without any plugs. They do not sell it any more and so it would have to be troubleshot and repaired on a component basis. and of course they will not give me any schematics for the purposes of troubleshooting. I have already ordered the new tower and so it is a mute point anyway.

As long as you consider the new PC as the “main” PC you should be able to use a tool such as VistaBootPRO – Dual Boot Windows 7 or Vista with Windows XP[/url] to setup a dual boot environment.

Just make sure you have a backup image before you start “playing” just to be safe.

Joe

--Joe

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…you can slave the old drive into the new computer as a secondary drive and then move your data to your new HD.

Are you sure about this? I’d be surprised if you could get this to work. Since both hard drives have a partition marked as active, I would expect the BIOS to report an error and halt the system.

You may be able to boot from a CD or DVD and copy data from one drive to another, but I don’t think you will be able to boot from one of the hard drives. Knoppix would be my choice for a live CD that will allow to move data between the drives, but there may well be better (smaller) alternatives. (The ISO file for Knoppix may take some time to download, it is almost 700 MB.)

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Are you sure about this? I’d be surprised if you could get this to work. Since both hard drives have a partition marked as active, I would expect the BIOS to report an error and halt the system…

This is NOT a problem. The restriction is that you can only have one active partition on each physical disk.

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Ok, so let me see if i have this correct. I have two Sata Drives in my new computer,(Haven’t received it yet, but this will be what i have shortly), Each drive has a different operating system, the primary drive has windows 7 home preimum, and the secondary drive has windows 7 ultimate. So i think i get from this conversation that i should be able to dual boot using a program like Vista Boot Pro, between both drives on my new computer, is that correct?

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… i should be able to dual boot using a program like Vista Boot Pro, between both drives on my new computer, is that correct?

Dual boot is a completely different question.

You certainly can configure a computer to dual boot between two different operating systems, but whether “Vista Boot Pro” is the right tool for this I don’t know. I suggest you ask questions about configuring multiple versions of Windows 7 to dual boot in the Windows 7 forum.

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The new hardware of the new system is not going to be compatible with the old OS’s drivers for the old system’s hardware, but it may still boot if the SATA driver is compatible and if it does then Win 7 will probably do a good job of adjusting the driver set based on its inspection of the new system’s hardware. If you do get that far then you could use the BIOS to change which OS you wanted to boot to by changing the hard drive boot order accordingly. Or, instead of Vista (Win7) BootPro, I would use a similar program called EasyBCD. Run that while in the new OS and use it to edit the bootloader by adding an entry for the old OS. Then you’ll get the boot option menu at startup to more easily choose which OS to boot to.

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My computers power supply went bad and it is cheaper to purchase another computer than it is to repair or replace this computers power supply. My Question is as follows: Both computers were purchased at Dell Computers and both have ata hard drives. My old computer drive is a sata drive and i am not sure about the new one being sata or not. The old computer is running windows 7 ultimate and the new one will be windows 7 home, can i install the old computers hard drive into the new computer, and use both drives as well as both operating systems, dual booting from different drives? If so how would i go about doing this? If not could i at least install the old systems drive and get the info from it some way so i wouldn’t loose everything on it? Your help woulkd be appreciated, Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

Why do you want to dual boot Windows 7 with Windows 7? Presumably you purchased Windows 7 Ultimate Upgrade for your old computer. Use this to upgrade Win 7 Home on your new computer or stay with Home if this meets your requirements. In either case you can install your old disk in your new machine and use it as a data disk, always assuming that your old disk is compatible with your new computer.

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That is exactly what i did Paul.

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