Installing a second hard drive

Howdy from a newbie here in Tampa. I'm relatively computer illiterate but not totally. To explain the situation (and yes, I did use the search feature!):
I have an HP Pavilion 505n but the motherboard died. I bought a new HP Pavilian a1130n (I'm apparently a glutton for punishment. lol.) The hard drive on the dead PC is still good and I would like to take it out and install it in my new PC, as there is much info on it I would like to keep.
The a1130n, as well as the 505n, both are running XP, SP2. The new computer has a 250 gig ATA HD so storage is not a problem. It has an Athlon 3500+ processor with 1 gig of DDR SDRAM. The old computer has a 60 gig HD.
I can muddle my way thru installing the old HD into the new PC physically, including the slave settings (CS jumpers according to HP).
After a thorough search using Google, I keep hearing the words "formatting the slave drive" over and over again. Wouldn't that cause me to lose the info on the old hard drive?
Can I just install the old drive and not have to reformat and keep my files, etc., just with a new drive letter?
Maybe I gave y'all too much info, but better more than not enough, right?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

TIA,

Barry

 

Yeah just pop it in as slave and it should come up as another drive letter within My Computer....

You can access all your data that you had on that drive.... : )

 

Rosco, I'll be installing this very soon with much relief. Thank you so much for your reply.

I belong to several motorcycle forums, so I ALMOST replied "Ride Safe!!" LOL

Barry

 

Hehe... No Probs : )

Their is a saying on this forum made by a member called "ddp" its.... Teach & Learn....

 

Well, I am just damn frustrated right now! The installation of the "old" hard drive went pretty easily even though I had to disconnect the DVD-ROM cable to use as the slave. I never use it anyway as I have a DVD player hooked up to one of my TVs. I set the jumpers on the old HD to CS as HP indicates. I do see what may be the problem, though. The new hard drive is a serial ATA and the old one is parallel. Could there be a compatibility issue here? If so, is there a workaround? I've tried booting the regular way, safe mode, hit ESC, F1 and about anything else I could think of. The screen that came up gave me several bootup options, but did seem to indicate that the OS might have detected new hardware. I'm not sure.
So, once again, I call on your expertise for any help I can get, for which I would be eternally greatful.

TIA,

Barry

BTW, here I am online without the DVD-ROM connected so that eliminates that problem. I'm assuming that nothing connects to the prongs where the jumpers are. Should I not be assuming that?

Thanks again.

 

Hi,
If your new PC has a SATA drive and is set to boot from it, you can easily also attach 2 ATA (IDE) devices on the traditional ATA controllers.
One could be a DVD-Rom and the other your old 60GB HD.
Each would be set as master on their own controller; it doesn't really matter which one is primary and which is secondary.
Should work fine :^)
Make sure both are set UltraDMA, and you will get good performance.
You could even move the Windows swapfile off of the drive containing the OS.
Regards

 

OGS, thanks for the reply but it made me realize just how much of a noob I am. You could very well have written that in some obscure foreign language and it would have made the same sense to me.
Do I need to purchase something or things at Best Buy or CompUSA? (I refuse to deal with Circuit City!) Are there red flat cables involved? What is a tradional ATA controller? I have no idea what ultraDMA means, nor Windows swapfile. Perhaps I'm in the wrong forum here and I should just take the PC to a repair shop but I just don't have the bucks for that now. Besides, I like to do things myself.

If y'all choose to ignore me because I'm so ignorant (not stupid), I wouldn't blame you at all.

Barry

 

Hang in there, barrynfla. These guys here won't steer you wrong. I,m form fla, too. Later George

 

Hang in there, barrynfla. These guys here won't steer you wrong. I,m from fla, too. Later George

 

Thanks, George. Great weather now isn't it?? I'm trying to hang in but perhaps a less technical forum where I can get answers in simple English would be better. I thought I asked reasonable questions (like "do I need to buy anything?") but got specs and the layout of my motherboard which does me about as much good as getting a detailed layout of a nuclear reactor without knowing what anything does. Do you know of any?

Thanks again,

Barry

 

I'm pretty sure that refers to the 2 IDE ports that devices plug into. Usually you can plug 2 devices (thus master and slave) into 1 port using the cord as a chain. Did you use the cable from the old computer too? You should have 3 connectors on the ribbon, 2 for devices, then the last goes into the motherboard. If you wanted to plug your DVD-Rom back in, use your old cable in the other slot and you have 1 device on each port, no worry about master and slave. If you string the 2 together you can get another 2 on the other port total of 4.

Well thats a little tougher for I'm no expert, just trying to help, someone please correct me so I don't spout wrong information, but thats like the "speed setting" or "language" type thing that the drives use to talk to each other.

 

d-rum, no, I didn't use the cables from the old pc. Actually the old one has three parallel cables, one from the motherboard to the floppy drive (the new PC doesn't seem to have a floppy drive) and one of the other parallel cables which has three connectors, one connecting to the motherboard (IDE1), a slave connector (which was unused), and the master connector that went to the hard drive. The other cable connects to the motherboard (IDE2), a slave connector (unused) and the third connector to the CD burner.
The new PC has one parallel cable with three connectors, one to the motherboard (IDE2) a slave connector (originally to the DVD-ROM, which I had hooked up to the old hard drive) and the third connector to the CD burner. The new computer has a flat red cable, which I assume is the SATA cable) connected to the motherboard (SATA1)and the hard drive. There is space for three more SATA cables. There is also another cable connected to the hard drive, which I believe is the power, since it comes from the power supply! D'oh!
Damn, that was long-winded! lol Y'know, it just occurred to me that maybe I could use one of the parallel cables from the old pc to run from IDE1 on the new pc to the old hard drive mounted in the new pc, keeping the jumper in the CS position. Any idea if that would work? Frankly, I don't really care about the DVD-ROM. I can't see ever using it.

My brain hurts!

Thanks for your help and maybe one day I'll be able to help someone.

Barry

 

Yeah go ahead and steal the cable out of the old one and plug your DVD-Rom back in. You never know, you might want to make a backup of a movie using information found here at afterdawn. I added my old hard drive to a new PC a while ago, my computer didn't work quite right because windows was installed on both so I simply dragged the files I really wanted to keep into my new drive than did a clean format (erases everything and sets the drive up to be used again) of the old one. Problems solved. You could even set up your floppy drive if you really wanted since your board supports it, I don't know what your case looks like but I'd hope there was a panel that popped out, giving you a place to install it.

 

Thanks, d-rum. Yes, there was a panel that I popped out for the second hard drive. Good point about the DVD-ROM. The documentation says that I cannot use an internal floppy drive, only external. Haven't used one in several years anyways. Great idea about moving files to the new hard drive. Certainly have enough room on it. Reformatting the old one makes a lot of sense at that point.

I'll let you know how it turns out (assuming it boots, that is!).

Thanks again,

Barry

Edit: I just noticed that the hard drive is 7200 rpms. Hell, that's faster than my bike's engine! Hmmmm, how to fit a hard drive into a motorcycle motor to increase the rpms?? LOL

 

HD stands for hard drive or Harley D? Good idea, 7200 beats my 1200...

 

WooooooHooooooo. Doing a happy dance around the computer!!!! It works with a second hard drive! Thanks to y'all, ESPECIALLY to d-rum! Couldn't have done it without you, bro! ddp's board layout helped a great deal, also.

Muchas gracias, y'all

Barry

BTW George, please ignore what I said about the weather. *^$^$*(^$ hurricanes!!!

 

Barry,
Watch the back door to Fla.. Were evacuating all our Helo's tomorrow here at PAFB. Take care and let us know haw you fare out.
Later George

 

Gotcha George. I assume PAFB is Patrick, right? I have a real good buddy there, Bruce Lininger, and he never said anything about evac. Maybe he's in a different area than you. Good luck, bro. Maybe it'll miss us.

Barry

 

"HD stands for hard drive or Harley D? Good idea, 7200 beats my 1200..." HD could stand for either, d-rum, but since I ride a Kawasaki Vulcan 1600 Classic, it stands for hard drive. Harley is the "Dark Side!" lol

Barry