Moving a Hard Drive to a New Computer

Moving an old drive to a new computer is often the best way to continue using the same data after you start using the new machine. However, it’s often not possible to use the old drive as the boot drive (the C: drive) on your new computer. You can’t just drop the old drive into the new box and use the Windows software that you installed on the old computer. Unless the old and new computers are exactly the same make and model or they use exactly the same motherboard and drive controllers, many of the listings in the Windows registry will not apply to the new computer. Rather than loading Windows, the computer will probably display a Blue Screen. In almost all cases, the best method is to set up the new computer and install Windows XP on the drive that came with that computer and treat the old drive as a D or subsequent drive. It might be possible to change the critical registry entries, but making these changes to the registry can some- times create more problems than it solves. Article No. 3140082 in the Microsoft Windows Knowledge Base contains more information about moving a system disk. Even if you don’t try to use it as the C: drive in the new computer, you still might want to install the old drive, both to read the data stored on that drive and to increase the storage capacity on your new computer. If Windows won’t detect a drive after you move it from one machine to another, consider these questions:

Are the jumpers on all the hard drives and other IDE devices set cor- rectly? Remember that each IDE channel can have just one master and one slave. Has the BIOS detected the drive? Restart the computer and run the BIOS Settings Utility to add the drive. See “BIOS Settings” on page 188 for detailed instructions.

On the other hand, if the old drive is more than about five or six years old, it’s probably close to the end of its useful life a hard drive is a mechanical device, and eventually all hard drives do wear out or break down. And that ancient drive’s capacity is probably just a fraction of your new one, so it’s best to just copy the data files from the old drive and then discard it.

NOTE Remember that your drive probably contains personal data files that you won’t want strangers to see. Before you dispose of an old drive, use a data shredder program such as BPS Data Shredder (www.shareup.com/BPS_Data_Shredder-download-13608.html) to destroy the data on the drive, or physically destroy the drive by removing the circuit board, opening the case, and scratching or bending the disks inside.

What to Tell the Service Guy

If the thought of opening up your computer and adding or removing a hard drive seems as unlikely as removing your own gall bladder, it’s okay to let somebody else do the job. Either a computer service shop or your cousin who builds computers for fun should be able to do the job for you. But it’s important to explain exactly what you want done. If you have to take the computer to a repair shop, bring your Windows CD in the package that contains the Product Key. The technician will need your key code to reinstall Windows on the new drive. If you can find the driver CDs that came with the computer or motherboard, the video controller, and other devices inside the computer, bring them too.

If you don’t have those disks, though, the technician can download the drivers through the Internet. If the drive is scraping, grinding, or making other unpleasant noises, ask the technician to remove the damaged drive and install a new one. Otherwise, explain that you want to install a new drive and try to use recovery software to create an image of the damaged drive on the new one. First, explain that the C: (or whichever) drive is damaged, and you want to try to recover the data. Emphasize that you do not want to run Check Disk or defragment the damaged drive. Tell the service person that you want to install a new C: drive and set the broken drive as a slave. Ask the technician to load Windows XP and the latest patches and service pack on the new C: drive, along with the drivers for your video controller, network interface, and other peripheral devices. After the new C: drive is in place and Windows XP is up and running again, ask your technician to run GetDataBack or another data recovery program to create an image of the damaged drive on the new drive. If the people in the shop are not familiar with the data recovery software, show them the information in this article.

After the data recovery is complete, or if the technician discovers that the drive is damaged beyond the ability of the recovery software to create an image, ask the tech to remove the damaged drive from the computer and return it to you. Even if you don’t send the drive to a recovery service, you don’t want a stranger (or even a relative) to keep a drive that contains your personal data.

Problems with Other Storage Devices

CD drives, DVD drives, and most other storage devices use the same IDE, SCSI, or SATA interfaces used by hard drives. Therefore, many of the same problems can occur with these drives loose connectors, incorrect jumper settings on IDE drives, and mechanical failures. If Windows does not detect a newly installed drive, check the cables and the jumper settings, and run the BIOS settings utility. If the autodetect feature in the BIOS tool does not identify the new drive automatically, try changing the individual settings for that drive. If the BIOS won’t recognize a new drive, it’s possible that the drive was introduced more recently than the BIOS version running on your system. Check with the manufacturer of your computer or motherboard for infor- mation about obtaining and installing an update to the BIOS software. If a drive stops working after it has been in use, the cause is most likely either a damaged driver file or a mechanical failure of the drive itself. Try reinstalling the driver software first; the device manufacturer’s website should offer downloads of the most recent driver release. If the drive itself stops working rather than the formatting or file structure on the drive, it’s almost always faster and easier to simply replace it with a new one than to try to repair a broken mechanism or circuit board. To be blunt, most of these devices were designed to be disposable. If your computer (or a drive installed later) is still under warranty, call or e-mail the manu- facturer for a replacement. If it’s out of warranty, just pull the old unit out of the computer and install a replacement.

A Few Last Words About Drives

When a drive fails and you can’t use the software tools and techniques in article 3 to fix it, you should have two objectives: first, saving and recovering the data files on the damaged drive, and second, restoring the computer to normal operation by installing Windows on a different drive (if the damaged drive was the old system drive). If you treat these two separately, you will reduce the impact of a damaged drive to a minimum.