Internal hard drive for external use

Closed
carlseye Posts 3 Registration date Friday December 9, 2016 Status Member Last seen December 14, 2016 - Dec 11, 2016 at 10:10 AM
R2D2_WD Posts 3606 Registration date Monday September 1, 2014 Status Member Last seen February 20, 2017   - Dec 15, 2016 at 05:07 AM
I have a hard drive from my old computer ( it died from motherboard failure) I'd like to use it as an external drive. It has a lot of corrupted files so I want to clean it , but I want to retain the operating system (windows XP ) Also I don't want the chance of those files to get into my new computer. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Related:

3 responses

R2D2_WD Posts 3606 Registration date Monday September 1, 2014 Status Member Last seen February 20, 2017   155
Dec 12, 2016 at 02:56 AM
Hi Carlseye,

I would format the hard drive. Why do you want to keep the OS? It may not be usable since there were hardware changes in the PC. My recommendation is to backup all important files and format the hard drive, wiping all partitions. Once all that is done, download the drive manufacturer’s diagnostic tool and check the drive’s health. If all looks fine, you will be having a pretty good backup option.

Hope this helps

0
carlseye Posts 3 Registration date Friday December 9, 2016 Status Member Last seen December 14, 2016
Dec 12, 2016 at 08:51 AM
Thanks for your answer my friend.I had wondered about the use of windows XP I really liked the OS compared to windows 8 as I have now.However, you may be right as to using
the hard drive as a backup for my new computer. The drive has 160 gb. available, but I wondered about using the old cd/rw drive as it's an ide unit.I don't know about that situationn.
Anyway, thanks for your help. I'll try to clean the hard drive and re-format it for it's new job for me.
Have a good day .
0
R2D2_WD Posts 3606 Registration date Monday September 1, 2014 Status Member Last seen February 20, 2017   155 > carlseye Posts 3 Registration date Friday December 9, 2016 Status Member Last seen December 14, 2016
Dec 13, 2016 at 06:26 AM
If you want, you can use Windows XP. It is just that the one installed on your hard drive may not be working because of the hardware changes. You may need to reinstall it on your primary drive. In both scenarios, it would be better to format the partition of the secondary drive containing the old OS. Replacing the CD ROM with a storage drive is a possible solution and may work just fine. In case you only need a storage drive and you are not going to install some software on it, I would suggest you to keep the drive as an external one and keep the CD ROM.
0
Tabeer Posts 63 Registration date Thursday December 3, 2015 Status Member Last seen December 26, 2016 23
Dec 13, 2016 at 07:31 AM
You cannot just move your hard drive to the new machine, unless the new machine is essentially identical to the existing machine.

You need software that will back up your hard drive and then restore it to different hardware.

I have tried lots of it. Among those that work best are:

XXClone
Paragon Hard Disk Manager

There are many others, including Acronis Trueimage, Easeus ToDo Backup, Shadow Copy Cloner, O&O Diskimage, etc.
0
carlseye Posts 3 Registration date Friday December 9, 2016 Status Member Last seen December 14, 2016
Dec 14, 2016 at 09:50 AM
thanks for your reply , my friend. I am aware of many ways of doing things
but what I am thinking about is using my old hard drive as an external drive and storage. It has 160 gig of useable space. My new computer has a very limiited useable space , and is a laptop, so I can't put another hd drive in it anyway. The are a number of companies that make suitable hardware for using older drives as external drives, and many places to get whatever software I might need. My biggest concern is the drive II have is full of
corrupted files and I don't want to mess up my internal drive, altho I would like to keep the OS on that drive , if that is possible. I've heard that it is
possible to run two different operating systems on a computer, but I'm not sure how to do it.I'm fairly new to computers so I don"t want to cause any problems I don't already have.
Thanks again , my friend.
carlseye
0
R2D2_WD Posts 3606 Registration date Monday September 1, 2014 Status Member Last seen February 20, 2017   155
Updated by R2D2_WD on 15/12/16 at 05:07 AM
You are right; you can run two different operating systems but both of them must be installed while connected to the PC where they will be used. So, if you want to have a backup OS on the external drive, you need to connect the drive as internal and do a fresh Windows XP installation. Another option is to clone the OS you have on your internal drive, like Tabeer suggested.
0