Can You Take A Hard Drive With Existing Data On It And Put It In A New Computer?

It's quite common to have an one-time computer die on you and not take it repaired, peculiarly if information technology'due south more than a few years old. But what can you do with the former carcass?

If a reckoner dies for whatsoever reason other than a dead hard drive, yous can always convert the old drive into an external unit of measurement, and grab important files off the drive in the procedure. The same thing can be done if you install a larger hard drive in your computer and don't know what to do with the old ane.

The first thing y'all should do before investing any time and coin in an old hard bulldoze is to attempt to determine if it's ok. If your old figurer was working fine and and so died all of a sudden, the hard drive is most likely fine. Motherboards, power supplies, microprocessors and retentivity can fail in the glimmer of an centre, but hard drives usually get flaky, make strange sounds or showroom other errors before they die. If your hard drive seemed fine before the organisation died then it's probably OK.

As well, if your organization was working fine and you simply swapped the old hard drive for a bigger i, then the former ane should still exist just fine. We won't go into the details of upgrading a hard drive considering it's a very complicated process. But the easiest way to upgrade is to use hard drive cloning software or hardware that lets you duplicate your original hard drive on a much bigger, blank difficult bulldoze. Once duplicated, y'all just bandy out the old drive for the new ane. Otherwise, you tin just install a new hard drive in your computer and format it from scratch. Of course, you'll need the discs for the operating arrangement, all the drivers and utilities and all of your applications, forth with the corresponding serial numbers where required.

Getting back to creating an external hard drive, the next thing you need to make certain of is the size and type of drive you take. Notebook computers typically utilize ii.5-inch hard drives, simply because they're smaller and use less power than 3.five-inch desktop difficult drives. If you're non certain what size your drive is you tin can measure it. Difficult drives accept a rectangular shape, and the smaller of the ii sides is where the size is measured.

Next, you have to determine what kind of bulldoze you accept because yous need an enclosure that's compatible with your drive. Older computers contain PATA, or IDE hard drives, and newer ones comprise SATA difficult drives. The connectors on PATA hard drives consist of a double row of metal pins, while the connectors on SATA hard drives consist of two flat tabs.

You demand to buy a hard-bulldoze enclosure that matches the size of the drive you lot have; a 2.v-inch enclosure for a two.v-inch drive and a 3.5-inch enclosure for a iii.v-inch drive. Proceed in mind that ii.v-inch enclosures are usually bus powered, meaning that they pull ability from the port they're plugged into and they don't come with a power adapter; this makes them completely portable. On the other hand, 3.5-inch difficult drives need more than power than can be pulled from a estimator port, so the 3.5-inch enclosures usually come with an Air-conditioning power adapter and they are not portable—meaning that they won't work if at that place's no AC outlet available.

Now you lot have to decide what kind of interface you want on your hard-drive enclosure. Most drive enclosures feature USB or FireWire interfaces because they're the most pop ones in utilize, and some feature a combination of both to make them more versatile. Near USB enclosures are USB 2.0, which is compatible with any USB port out in that location. But just USB 3.0 peripherals will deliver USB iii.0 operation, and that's merely when continued to a USB three.0 port. More than and more new computers feature USB 3.0 ports, and then you might want to go with a USB 3.0 enclosure.

Installing a hard drive in an external enclosure is very like shooting fish in a barrel; usually all you need is a screwdriver. In the worst case, you might have to move or remove a jumper that sets the drive to exist a main or slave, only the odds are you won't take to bear on anything merely your screwdriver.

Once your external drive is working, you tin connect it to a figurer and pull whatsoever files you want from it. Then you lot can format the drive and first with a make clean slate. If you are uncertain and experience every bit though you might need the assistance of professionals, contact the B&H computer service center.

Can You Take A Hard Drive With Existing Data On It And Put It In A New Computer?,

Source: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/explora/computers/tips-and-solutions/convert-old-hard-drive-external-unit

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