Advice needed PLEASE

[On the Huh]

The PC I'm on was built for me about 3 years ago. It was quite high tech at the time, not the top notch, but much better than what you could get from PC World at the time. It has space for another hard drive. This runs on Vista
I also have an older computer, a shop bought one, a couple+ years older and no doubt lower on spec. This older one doesn't seem to work any more. It powers up, i.e. turns on, but nothing on the monitor (blank screen). This runs on XP.

My question: Can I take the hard drive from the older computer and put it in the newer computer, and if so what complications will I face and how will I get round them?

Thanks for your replies in anticipation.

 

[arad85]

It'll depend on the physical interface. IDE or SATA. Which drive is in the old machine. The one on the top or bottom in the following picture.

And which free slot do you have on the motherboard:

(if the pics come out that is...)

 

[On the Huh]

Bottom

 

[arad85]

In both cases (the disk and the HDD interface on the board)?

 

[On the Huh]

Cheers for helping Andy and forgive me as I'm a bit thick on this sort of thing.

Yes, I'm 99 pc certain that I can just take the HD from the old computer and plug it into the newer motherboard...if that's what you mean. (IDE/ATA)

 

[antihero]

top drive is SATA, bottom is IDE. The end.

 

[leepunyer]

you may also find there are some jumper connections on the drive, ensure you put the jumper onto the slave mode.

its not 100% important but dependant how the spare slot is connected, could cause a hardrive conflict and not boot. especially if this spare disk is bootable. IE has an operating system on

 

[neil_g]

as said, as long as it physically connects then windows should just see it as an extra drive. xp/vista/7 will all read and write fat32 and ntfs so youll be fine.