You cannot replace the C drive of Windows PC #1 with the C drive of Windows PC #2 and expect the resulting machine to boot unless PC #1 and PC #2 use the same motherboard and peripherals. However, you can configure the C drive of PC #2 to be a secondary drive in PC #1 assuming that PC #1 supports the appropriate hardware interface -- e.g. if the PC #2's hard drive uses an IDE interface, then you'll need an IDE interface in PC #1.
Addonics makes a product that lets you convert any IDE drive into an external USB drive. Access via USB is significantly slower than native IDE access, but you can connect to any PC with a USB interface; perhaps they have a USB 2.0 version by now: http://www.addonics.com/products/io/ While converters like these are somewhat slow, they allow you to connect a drive up to a running PC -- eliminating the need to power it down, open its chassis, and make the IDE or SATA connection -- which can be difficult in a smaller chassis stuffed with cables. I have occasionally moved IDE drives between PCs whose motherboards were manufactured by different companies, but never encountered a driver problem. When it doesn't work the right off the bat, its usually a master/slave configuration issue; I've also run into IDE cables with bad slave connectivity (cable or connector problems). There is nothing in the Windows End User License Agreement that precludes attaching a disk on which Windows has been installed to another PC running Windows (or any other OS). If you have frequent power outages, I recommend adding a UPS capable of powering your PC long enough to shut down Windows in an orderly fashion; otherwise, you are subjecting the data on your hard drive(s) to risk from both power surges and from being scribbled upon if the drive happens to be in the middle of write operation when the power fails. APC makes a nice product, but be sure to not buy one larger than is needed for ~5 minutes of operation. I have no relationship with any of the companies mentioned above... 73, Dave, AA6YQ -----Original Message----- From: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com [mailto:digitalra...@yahoogroups.com]on Behalf Of Andrew O'Brien Sent: Thursday, July 23, 2009 6:38 PM To: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com Subject: [digitalradio] Zapped PCs, data recovery, and Windows ! After years or running PC's without issues, I have had 4 go bad in 12 months. Two this week, 4 days apart via thunderstorms . One went today just an hour after I had fully reinstalled ham equipment on a new PC that arrived yesterday. The new one survived, I had unplugged it at the sound of thunder. I powered off the older one but forgot to remove the power cord, it got zapped. I put in a spare power supply that i had, that lasted 5 minutes and gave up the ghost. Maybe something else was weakened by the original zap and caused the second power supply to burn out. Anyway, my main issue is the frustrating fact that I have data on hard drives that seems ridiculously complex to retrieve when using Windows based PCs. My local computer store tells me that one cannot simply take a hard drive from a old Pc and place it in a new PC even if you have a Windows license disc for the new PC. Is this correct? In the past I have taken old drives and installed them in different PC's as slave drives. However this causes one to have to re-install many programs because they were originally installed to the registry on a C-drive. So what do I do with 5 hard drives laying around the shack ? In particular one two-drive system with 160 gigs of useful data on it (both have Windows OS on them since both are from different original PC systems!) . It would be nice to install in to a PC without having to get a HD with an OS on it. -- Andy
