Adding HD to my comp...

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A friend's comp stopped working. He has a few thousand songs on there. What I want to do is see if it's possible to add his HD to my comp to access his music and save it to a flashdrive. His comp is a Emachines t2895 running XP, mine is a pieced together one running Win7 Ultimate. Also, if I replaced his power supply, which was burnt, what else can I check to see what's wrong with his comp? I also used that atx power supply tester, which plugs into MB and it made the cpu turn on, but as soon as I disconnect it,it turns off. Any suggestions? Thanks
 
Originally Posted By: daves66nova
A friend's comp stopped working. He has a few thousand songs on there. What I want to do is see if it's possible to add his HD to my comp to access his music and save it to a flashdrive. His comp is a Emachines t2895 running XP, mine is a pieced together one running Win7 Ultimate. Also, if I replaced his power supply, which was burnt, what else can I check to see what's wrong with his comp? I also used that atx power supply tester, which plugs into MB and it made the cpu turn on, but as soon as I disconnect it,it turns off. Any suggestions? Thanks


It should be possible to add his HD to your computer. You'll need to ensure that the physical data interface is the same between the two. That is, if his HD uses the SATA interface, you'll need to have an extra SATA port on your motherboard to hook it to, as well as a SATA power connector from your power supply harness. If it has an IDE interface, you'll need to ensure that your motherboard has a connection for the IDE data cable, and you'll need a 4-pin MOLEX connector on your power supply's harness. I hotlinked an image below that shows the difference between SATA and IDE.

sata.jpg
 
Looking up the specs on his computer, I'm guessing that the motherboard is probably an IDE motherboard and probably doesn't have any SATA connectors, just given how dated the hardware looks to be. There are various IDE-to-SATA adapter options available.
 
Originally Posted By: Hokiefyd
Looking up the specs on his computer, I'm guessing that the motherboard is probably an IDE motherboard and probably doesn't have any SATA connectors, just given how dated the hardware looks to be. There are various IDE-to-SATA adapter options available.


If it's just one use you can ebay one pretty cheap, especially if you can wait.

But yes, with or without the adapter you should be able to plug it in and it will be available in windows. I don't recall having to take ownership via disk management in a long time.

As to the old pc, swap a power supply and see what happens. If that doesn't do it I would start again from scratch, I certainly wouldn't waste time/money tracking down another of the same mainboard.
 
Look at Other World Computing for external drive enclosures.

Last couple I bought for less than $10...
 
Originally Posted By: SrDriver
You can boot off on a a Linux DVD then copy the files from the hard drive to an external hard drive............. Another option.

I thought of that as well, but he said the power supply was junk so he would need a new power supply to do that.
 
Originally Posted By: Hokiefyd
Originally Posted By: daves66nova
A friend's comp stopped working. He has a few thousand songs on there. What I want to do is see if it's possible to add his HD to my comp to access his music and save it to a flashdrive. His comp is a Emachines t2895 running XP, mine is a pieced together one running Win7 Ultimate. Also, if I replaced his power supply, which was burnt, what else can I check to see what's wrong with his comp? I also used that atx power supply tester, which plugs into MB and it made the cpu turn on, but as soon as I disconnect it,it turns off. Any suggestions? Thanks


It should be possible to add his HD to your computer. You'll need to ensure that the physical data interface is the same between the two. That is, if his HD uses the SATA interface, you'll need to have an extra SATA port on your motherboard to hook it to, as well as a SATA power connector from your power supply harness. If it has an IDE interface, you'll need to ensure that your motherboard has a connection for the IDE data cable, and you'll need a 4-pin MOLEX connector on your power supply's harness. I hotlinked an image below that shows the difference between SATA and IDE.

sata.jpg

would I need to move that little white clip in the back so that it's recognized as a slave hdd,or something like that? Also, if it does work, how do I switch over to the new hdd to d/l songs?
 
If it has a jumper on the back, then it's an IDE drive. You may need to set it to "slave" position depending on your BIOS and how it reads the drive. It'd really help if you could post pictures of the inside of your computer showing the motherboard and the different connections it has, and the back side of your friend's hard drive so we can see what type it is. Then we could give you some pretty straight-forward instructions.
 
I ended up getting this one. http://www.ebay.com/itm/321349475043?_trksid=p2060778.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT .One question, do i have to connect the rear power cable to the HDD,or will the usb provide it? I hooked it up w/o rear power and i didn't hear the HDD at all.
 
Originally Posted By: daves66nova
I ended up getting this one. http://www.ebay.com/itm/321349475043?_trksid=p2060778.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT .One question, do i have to connect the rear power cable to the HDD,or will the usb provide it? I hooked it up w/o rear power and i didn't hear the HDD at all.


USB should provide the power. Did you get this working? I bought something like this and in theory it shouldve worked but my computer didnt like the cable.
 
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