My sister has a computer with Windows 98se. However, it is crashing on her. She got a new computer with Windows XP. My question is, can she install her old hard drive with 98se onto her new PC so she can transfer her files over to her new hard drive with XP? She is very illiterate when it comes to computers. The good news is that a working hard disk that was formatted for use by Windows 98 can certainly be read by Windows XP. The bad news is that you'll have to open the box and install the drive. That's not for everyone. It's actually a common approach used by computer geeks ... take an old hard drive from an old computer, and install it as the second drive in a new one. Everything that used to appear on drive "C:" on the old computer might now appear as drive "D:" on the new one. Once it's set up, copying files from old to new is both easy and fast. And this approach comes with a bonus. Once you're done copying the files you want to keep, you can leave the old hard drive in the new machine, reformat it if you like, and have that much extra disk space to use as you like. The down side is that you need to be somewhat computer hardware literate to install the drive. It does mean opening up your PC, connecting the old drive in the right way in the right place. There's no "one way" to do it, otherwise I'd tell you here. It can vary based on the type of computer you have, and the type of hard disk. So unless you're already relatively comfortable cracking open your machine and dealing with the gooey guts inside, I'd leave the installation to a pro. It's typically a fairly quick and easy install for someone that knows what they're doing. Related:
Article 9192 | Posted September 19, 2005 |
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when i hooked up the hd i'm trying to read on my xp computer it just boots to the 98 logo apears but then goes to dos. how do i get it to boot windows 98
Posted by: William Rose, II at September 18, 2007 7:02 AMi want to pt my hard drive in my new comp will i be able ot do that and jsut install the drives for the new mother board or will i have to wipe hd and reinstall windows
Posted by: MrMarble at January 9, 2008 3:28 PMI have a related question. I want to move old hard drive (installed with Windows XP) into new PC and thats' it. I have everything working on the old PC except that it is an old machine. I simply want to get more speed and do not want to reconfigure the OS
Posted by: Jun at February 11, 2008 9:27 AMi need to transfer my old hard drive to new computer that the motherboard shorted out, can I do this without installing it in my new computer. Old computer hard windows xp, new has vista. Thanks
Posted by: mickey at May 27, 2008 6:33 PMis it possible to connect my old hardrive to my new pc externally?
Posted by: tony at July 12, 2008 10:24 AM-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
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Sure. You can purchase a USB drive enclosure and put it in
there.
Leo
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Posted by: Leo at July 13, 2008 9:31 AMhJqXskSnUyJMzf97oyOJvuo=
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Leo, I have enjoyed your newsletter for years, and am happy to be able to contribute something for your other readers. I have had great success in using a USB 2.0 Universal Drive Adapter from Newer Technology is accessing old hard drives, from both desktop and laptop computers. It eliminates the need to open your computer to install the old hard-drive. The adapter allows you to access the old hard-drive from your new computer as an external disk. The cost for the adapter is less than #30.00 not including shipping. I purchased mine from Other World Computing http://eshop.macsales.com/. I have no connection to this Company, except as a satisfied customer. Best to you and yours
Posted by: Al Blakeborough at September 16, 2008 9:45 AMI often have to add a drive to a computer on a temporary basis. I use an inexpensive USB - IDE/SATA/notebook adapter for this. It comes with a 5/12v power adapter to power the drive, and a multi-connector plug on the end of a USB cable. it even has a short SATA cable. Perfect for transferring data from an old hard drive.
Posted by: Phillip Abbott at September 16, 2008 7:33 PMMy old computer(pentium4,2.0ghz,1g ddr3200 ram, 800fsb).The motherboard failed. I rebuilt it using new components(pentium core2duo, 2.53ghz, 4g ddr2-800 ram, sata HDD). My old ide hard drive was fine so I put in in the box and made it a slave to the sata drive. I loaded my original win xp-pro and my original office pro2003. I made outlook express the default mail client. it worked for a day and them I started getting an error message that the address book was not installed, and that oe is not configured correctly. When I try to open email I get a message that there is an error and the email won't open. I tried your suggestion of downloading ie from the microsoft website, but that did not solve the problem. I tried a system restore and that did not solve the problem. I have been able to read and copy most of my data files to the old hdd to the new. Also I would like to copy/move my address book and my stored/downloaded emials from the old hard drive to the new one. I found the old address book and I copied it to the desktop, removed the read-only attribute in the properties view, but still get the error message that the address book file has been locked by another application that I am supposed to close. But nothing else is open. I cannot find the old emails and where they are stored. I have no idea how to proceed from here. Thanks for any input.
Posted by: Michael Voolich at September 23, 2008 3:31 AMOk I have an adapter, connected it. However my Vista notebook shows the external drive as being here, but there doesn't seem to be any way to access it. Can someone enlighten me? It simply shows up in my hardware manager and nowhere else.
I was using Linux, on my old pc. Could this be the problem? All my info is in my old PC. It died suddenly. The hard drive is not bad. I can hear it spinning.
03-Oct-2008
Posted by: Ken Sturmer at October 2, 2008 3:28 PM