Hard drive transfer

metamorphpwner · 29 Oct 2009 at 12:25

Hi,
I now have a 320gb drive sat doing nothing after selling some other components from that pc.
Is there an easy way to transfer some of the data eg. music/pics ect. to the external drive attached to the computer i'm currently using?

Would it be possible to plug it into this computer and just copy over to the external or would i need to use a hard drive caddy?

photoshop · 29 Oct 2009 at 12:36

Plug it in to your pc by SATA/ATA, copy the items over to External HDD

metamorphpwner · 29 Oct 2009 at 12:39

photoshop said:
Plug it in to your pc by SATA/ATA, copy the items over to External HDD

That simple?
i thought that if i just plugged into the sata it may want to boot from it or something, Didn't want to just go ahead and do it incase it did something to the hard drive that's already in the pc.

photoshop · 29 Oct 2009 at 13:20

metamorphpwner said:
That simple?
i thought that if i just plugged into the sata it may want to boot from it or something, Didn't want to just go ahead and do it incase it did something to the hard drive that's already in the pc.

As long as you have the bios set to boot from the existing HDD you wount have any bother.

Go ahead and do - there wount be any problems.

metamorphpwner · 29 Oct 2009 at 13:23

kool, thanks. last thing, would it detect the drice if i pluged it in while the pc was already turned on like it does with USB?

andy_mk3 · 29 Oct 2009 at 13:24

metamorphpwner said:
kool, thanks. last thing, would it detect the drice if i pluged it in while the pc was already turned on like it does with USB?

I don't think SATA is plug and play like USB is. Just plug in and switch on, you're not going to damage anything by doing so.

AbsenceJam · 29 Oct 2009 at 13:47

metamorphpwner said:
kool, thanks. last thing, would it detect the drice if i pluged it in while the pc was already turned on like it does with USB?

If in AHCI mode then yes, otherwise do scan for hardware changes in device manager. Or to be safer use http://mysite.verizon.net/kaakoon/hotswap/index_enu.htm

photoshop · 29 Oct 2009 at 13:57

personally i would turn pc off, add hdd, and then turn it back on.

DragonQ · 29 Oct 2009 at 14:07

SATA is plug and play in AHCI mode, yes. That's why eSATA is also plug and play. Not sure if the same applies when it's in IDE mode though.

AbsenceJam · 29 Oct 2009 at 18:21

photoshop said:
personally i would turn pc off, add hdd, and then turn it back on.

Then you're daft, no need to.