Swapping Hard drives.?

Question

My wife's usb drives are not working so I want to put her hard drive into my pc. She has several thousand pictures of the kids we are trying to back up but cant because of the usb issues. Is it possible to swap out the hard drives? We are both using XP, but have diffrent system specs.

Answer 1

Floppy Disc. This is the old-school way for sure, but if your computer has a floppy drive you can certainly transfer it this way. The easiest way is to open My Computer and select the floppy drive. Then drag the file from the folder it is contained in to the open floppy drive window. This will copy it to the disc. Then you can take the disc to the other computer and transfer it from the floppy to the computer using the same method.



USB Thumb Drive. Plug the USB drive into the USB port on the computer. In some older computers this may need a driver to operate. Follow the floppy disc instructions for transferring the file as the method is identical.



E-mail. Every e-mail client is a little different, but this works good if you want to get something from your work computer to your home computer. In general, you want to open a new message. Locate the attach button and use it to upload your file into the e-mail. Then send it to a home e-mail address.



From your home computer, detach the file and save it to the computer.



Network Drive. If you are transferring files between computers on a network this method works great. Create a folder on one computer. Right click the folder and select properties. This will open a window. Select the tab that says ‘Sharing’ and then select the radio button that says ‘Share this folder’. Click OK.



Now go to another computer on the network. Open up My Computer. From the tools menu select ‘Map Network Drive’. Click the browse button. Locate the other computer through this menu and select the folder. Click ‘OK’. Then Click Finish. This will create a link to the folder on the other computer. Anything that you put in this folder will now be visible from both computers.



If you wish to store the file on both computers, you can do so by dragging and dropping the file into another folder from the networked computer.



When you migrate for XP or Vista to Windows 7 you need not to reinstall all the programs all over again. Migration tool offers feature to simply updating the OS.



Still if you want to clone your hard disk data, Online data backup utility would be advisable.

Answer 2

The best way to do this is to buy an ide adapter. I bought mine at Micro-center. This adapter plugs into the back of the hard drive and you can rescue the photos from there.



I then would place all the photos & files you need onto a flash drive. I've lost photos and files due to hard drive failure.



Good luck. Feel free to email me with any questions or if you need more information.



Another idea is to check what the motherboard is and then to download the drivers for the usb drives.



Another option is to buy a enclosure for her hard drive and then place it inside the enclosure. From there plug the drive into your usb ports and get the photos that way.

Answer 3

both PC's must have the same controller (EIDE or SATA)

you can open up your PC's and check.



EIDE uses a flat ribbon that connect your hard drive to motherboard

SATA uses about 1/2" wide cord that connects hard drive to the motherboard



if you're lucky enough and both are SATA, all you have to do is take your wife's hard drive and its cable and just connect the hard drive to one of the spare slot on your pc and connect the SATA cable in one of the open SATA connection on your motherboad and connect the spare power cord in your pc to the additional hard drive. then restart your pc and go to "my computer" and you be able to see your wife's hard drive there.