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Install an 80GB IDE drive from Dell 4500S into new E510 computer w/ SATA HD
I recently had a motherboard failure on my old Dell 4500S. The HD was confirmed as OK. I recently purchased a Dell E510 computer with an 80 GB HD. I want to install my old hard drive in the new computer to 1) recover old data from it and 2) reformat and use it for additional storage or for backup. The old HD has ports on the back for a power connector and a cable similar to the one plugged into the CD/DVD drive (I presume that is an IDE cable). The new computer's HD has a totally different cable - I presume that is an SATA drive with appropriate cabling.
Dell tells me (via online chat session) that I cannot use my old HD in my new computer because of the the new SATA technology. I am not quite ready to give up.
I would like to recover my old data, but perhaps I could plug my old HD in another older Dell PC my son has and recover the data.
Any help out there would be nice - even if it confirms what Dell has told me.
Thanks.
shesagordie
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January 15th, 2006 18:00
FarmerBrown
Check out the following post,
http://forums.us.dell.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=dim_harddrive&message.id=105019
Bev.
FarmerBrown
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January 15th, 2006 21:00
shesagordie
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January 16th, 2006 00:00
FarmerBrown
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January 16th, 2006 02:00
I had a computer technician check out my computer. He installed the HD in another computer and transferred most of my data onto a DVD. He said the HD was fine and presumably some component on the motherboard was faulty. He told me that there should not be a problem using this HD in a new computer as a 2nd HD.
I have it installed in the floppy drive bay as it physically fits there, but I have the second connector connector on the IDE cable and a power cable plugged into it - the other connector is plugged into the CD/DVD drive.
One of my thoughts was perhaps the there is some problem with the HD.
Another thought I had was perhaps you have to repartition the IDE drive to get it to work in this newer computer. I could try the HD out in my son's older computer which I presume has an existing IDE drive - transfer any data I need and then put back in the new computer and repartition the HD using the Microsoft Disk Management Utiltiy. The new HD is recognized in this utility as Disk 0 but all of the memory is unallocated. Whereas the SATA HD is Disk 0 with partition and drive letter c: attached to it. The CD/DVD drive is is Disk CD-ROM-0 with drive letter D attached to it.
Does any of this make sense. Forgive my ignorance, but I am learning a lot about hard drives I did not know before. THanks for your input.
shesagordie
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January 16th, 2006 03:00
FarmerBrown
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January 16th, 2006 23:00
OK. I did what I said I was going to do. I got the same results on my son's computer. It has the same hard drive as mine except it is 40 gb rather than 80 gb. I also swapped my hard drive for his. The computer recognized it, but acted like it had no partitions or data. Finally after talking to the technician who worked my computer earlier and recovered the data off of the hard drive, I finally came to the conclusion that the hard drive had lost it's partitioning. I also found out that the technician had all of my missing files on his hard drive.
Therefore, I installed the hard drive in my new E510, partitioned (single) and formatted it. It now appears to be working OK as a newly formatted HD (Drive E). It looks as though there was a problem with the hard drive and I was not going crazy (though close).
Thanks a bunch for your help!!!
The upside is that I learned a lot.
shesagordie
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January 17th, 2006 02:00