Hi

Buy a USB external hard drive case and put the old drive in it

and transfer your info to the new computer that way .

Good Luck

Ditto. What you need to do is to be careful that your caddy has the right iternal connectors. There are two types P-ATA (also known as EIDE) and S-ATA.

If you look at the back of your hard disk.

A P-ATA(EIDE) hard disk has three connectors stretching across the entire length of the unit. The first one is two rows of pins. Several dozen. The second one is a block of 8 pins, and the the last one is a block of fouth thick pins.

A S-ATA hard disk has three connectors on the left hand side onlu. The first one is just under an inch long, the second one is just under half an inch long, and the third one is a set of 4 thin pins. Some S-ATA have more connectors than this, if any two of the conectors look like a strip of plastic with golden teeth set into them then you have an S-ATA hard drive.

If you got the system in 2003 then it more than likely uses an IDE (PATA) drive.  When Dell put together the computer it would have jumpered that drive for Cable Select.  If you use an external enclosure make sure to check the documentation to see what jumper setting (Master, Slave or Cable Select) you need to use when connecting it.

If both the old and new systems are desktop computers, another option is to connect the old hard drive as a secondary drive in the new system.  For faster data transfers you will want to have the old drive on a different cable than the main drive in the new system.  This also avoids the problem of the computer trying to boot from the wrong drive (using an external enclosure avoids that risk as well).

Here's The Thing;

           The computer will NOT boot up, i have figured that out already. I don't have any open 4pin molex plugs in my E520 to power the crashed hard drive (im using the open molex to power my HD3850).

I don't think i have an IDE or w/e connector inside my computer, since my hard drive thats already in it is on SATA.

so i cannot plug it in as slave, but how much do usb enclosures go for and do they support the old IDE connectiosn?

If you don't have any open power connectors inside the new system then you will have to use an external drive enclosure or disconnect something else to connect the old hard drive.  I know for sure that there are external enclosure that supports IDE, SATA and both types of drives.   Just make sure to check the specifications on the box before you buy it. ;)

USB enclosures go for about $40 to about $100 (for a networkable version), you can buy used on Ebay for cheaper as you don't have to worry about it lasting al that long. They "usually" come in either EIDE (P-ATA) or S-ATA, one that supports both willl be more expensive.

You also need to be aware that your HD may have data damage. It may be a lot more than just a boot sector failure. In which case you would need to purchase file recovery software. I personally recomend Active@ File Recovery Enterprise. You can get a demo off of the web which will tell you how much of your disk you can salvage, but you need the full version to actually salvage it.

I don't know what your system is like inside, but if you have an EIDE DVD/CD ROM, you could just plug the HD in where your DVD/CD currently is.

Hi

Here is a link for USB hard drive cases that would work for you.

http://www.usb-port.com/bf2043.html

Edit

Or try this link .  

http://www.geeks.com/products_sc.asp?cat=104 

Good Luck