Put hard drive with OS in another computer

Question

I have a laptop hard drive with Windows 2000 installed, however, the hardware in my computer are damaged. My question is can I put this hard drive in a different computer (different brand name, and hardware) so I get back up the files in this hdd. My concern is it may not work if hardware are different.

leduke30 · Answer

Get an IDE adapter-2.5' to 3.5'- and plug your Laptop harddrive into your PC's  Secondary IDE channel as Master(no jumper). Then jumper your CD Drive as a Slave to it temporarily. DO NOT put it in the PC's Primary IDE Channel. Boot up and go into Windows Explorer; Drag and Drop all your personal files into the PC's  My Documents folder, or if you have a CDRW with a Formatted disk for Direct CD, send the files to it. You are right that trying to use it as a boot drive in another brand of laptop will cause a heap of trouble. When you get your personal stuff off from it, 'wipe' it and redo it for the other laptop, as the hardware/drivers differences will give you a king sized headache. The Adapters are always for sale on Ebay,  most larger Computer stores and some surplus outfits. I have one I have used a few times, and I will always have one, as long as I own a Laptop.

shaguar822 · Answer

Thanks a lot for your help. I'll try to do that.

JersWork · Answer

If you can't find the adapter,  you might be able to move the drive into another system and get it to work.  Windows 2000 is 'Plug-n0Pray' so it should find the new hardware,  just make sure to start-up in safe mode.  I have done this several times,  and only once was not able to get it to boot without major efforts.  The one time I had problems,  I was still able to make it work by using a Win2K Pro install feature 'Repair Install' which only re-detected hardware and installed appropriate drivers.  That worked a champ for me.

Storage, Drives & Media

Was this post helpful?