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DELL DIMENSION E521:
This is hopefully an easy question?!
I have an 8 year old Dell Dimension E521 with Vista Home Premium installed. Unfortunately it has "died". A friend gave me a similar spec E521 (with Vista Home Basic installed). If I substitute my HD in this machine, will it boot up? Or is my Vista OS "locked" to my old pc??
Alternatively, if I install my HD as a secondary drive, will I presumably be able to access its data?
I note my CD drive data cable is inserted next to the HD SATA slot (normally reserved for a 2nd HD?). Can a 2nd HD data cable be inserted into one of the two SATA slots lower down (which I thought were normally used for CD drives?)??
I will appreciate any guidance.
Regards.
osprey4
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July 27th, 2015 17:00
Hi Ronaldo_UK,
The drive from the other E521 will probably work. Your copy of Vista is an OEM install, so it's not tied to anything specific other than a Dell desktop of that era. If you install your old drive as a secondary drive, that will work too. It makes no difference which SATA slot you connect it to.
You may run into a problem accessing files on the HDD from your old E521. If so, Google "how to take ownership of files and folders in Vista".