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Discussion: General Forums / Hardware & Software Discussion - Swapping harddrives between computers - I have 2 computers one intel p4 2.26 ghz (3 years old) and a new
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    DrunkenSoul's Avatar

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    Swapping harddrives between computers

    I have 2 computers one intel p4 2.26 ghz (3 years old) and a new athlon 64 3700+ (brand new not touched). I bought 2 hard drives because I need to use raid but the motherboard on the athlon does not support raid for IDE hard drives, only SATA.

    My Intel based desktop allows for IDE raid. The Athlon computer has not been touched yet, so is there a way I can swap the hard drives so I can have a fresh computer with raid and have my files still on the other one and I dont lose anything.

    I don't think this is possible as there will be conficts in bios or xp. So I figure the only way is to back up my software and hardware and do a clean install on both of them. I am hoping someone can tell me I can actually do this

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  3. #2

    Trooper's Avatar

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    Re: Swapping harddrives between computers

    you could always buy a IDE raid control card that is PCI to do what you need on the AMD computer
    that sounds like a good idea trooper.
    -Vulcan

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  5. #3


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    Re: Swapping harddrives between computers

    If you currently have data on a drive and want to put that drive in to a RAID, you will lose the data on that drive.

    If that's not the answer to your question, then you've lost me somewhere... What harddrives are currently in which computer with what data on them? And where do you want the data and drives to go?

    hd 1 - computer X - data y/n -> computer y - data y/n
    etc
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  7. #4

    DrunkenSoul's Avatar

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    Re: Swapping harddrives between computers

    Yea, i lost you somewhere:

    Computer 1:
    Intel Pentium 4 2.26
    Intel Mobo w/ raid 0,1,1+0
    1 80 gig HD (OS and programs)
    1 160 gig HD (Data-documents, movies, music, photos drive)

    Computer 2 (assembled no OS):
    Amd Athlon 64 3700
    Mach Speed mobo K8M8MS
    2 200 gig HDs (nothing installed..will be used for raid)

    I need to use one computer for office work and the other will be for light computer stuff and gaming. I want to switch the athlon 64 to the gaming rig, but in order to do that raid needs to be on the other computer. So I would like Computer 1 to have the 2 200 gig hard drives (nothing on them) with raid 1 and have Computer 2 to have the 80 and 160 gig hard drives so i can keep my current documents (school work, movies, games).

    I cant have the computer be both for gaming and office work (raid) as they will be in different locations. I love it, if I would basically hot swap it, but i am pretty sure that wont work.

    If "hot swapping" wont work and I will need to reformat the 80 and 160 gig hard drive to make them compatibily with Computer 2, can I hotswap the data drive since it has no OS( this way i can at least keep my data without using dvd-r's)?

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    Re: Swapping harddrives between computers

    You can move the 160GB drive to the Athlon PC without any problems if it's just a data drive. You could move the 80GB OS drive too but you have to run the WinXP recovery installation. It should keep everything intact like installed programs. However, it's best to format and reinstall that drive. The gaming computer should start fresh.
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  11. #6

    DrunkenSoul's Avatar

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    Re: Swapping harddrives between computers

    will moving the 160 gb hd work fine even though its partitioned?

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  13. #7

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    Re: Swapping harddrives between computers

    I think the answer to your question as I understand it is no.

    You really need an extra drive to temporarily backup your data so you can throw the 200's in there, setup your raid and get going. I personally have about 10 drives laying around here...for that exact reason.
    |TG|JackMac4


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