Please clarify that my friend is a moron.

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Soldato
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My hard drive appears to have stopped working as my pc won't pick it up an I want to plug it into his pc to check it but he believes it will damage his pc for some moronic reason. Clearly he won't listen to me so maybe he will listen to you. This hardrive has all my backed up stuff so if it doesn't work I've lost a lot of stuff, hence why I really want to double check to see if it's dead.

Please do clarify.
 
When you plug it in, it will show your hard drive as just another drive ie like he shoved in a portable drive.

There are no problems with doing this - i do it all the time when trying to salvage peoples corrupt/damaged drives.
 
Your friend is a moron.

Where I used to work we had a dedicated PC for trying to salvage data from dead hard disks. It must have had thousands of dead/broken HDDs plugged into it over the years and it still works just fine. One HDD even set alight whilst plugged into it, and the machine was fine.
 
I work in Computer Forensics. It will most likely be fine, in my expert opinion :P

If he's a worry wort, use an external enclosure.
 
alexhull24 said:
Your friend is a moron.

Where I used to work we had a dedicated PC for trying to salvage data from dead hard disks. It must have had thousands of dead/broken HDDs plugged into it over the years and it still works just fine. One HDD even set alight whilst plugged into it, and the machine was fine.
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IBAS by any chance?
 
About 5 years ago, my little brother's pc was screwed, so my friend reloaded windows for him.

A day later is went wrong for a completely different reason and he went complaining to parents about it and they had a go at me. Needless to say, he got a beating.

I understand your frustration OP! Well when your mate's pc goes wrong you tell him where to stick it - because I bet he asks you for help!
 
Actually hes not entirely a moron, tho the chance of damage is very very unlikely, but if the HDD has a corrupt ntfs.sys file on it it can potentially crash the host OS and if it has an infected ntfs.sys it could even infect your system with a rootkit or virus. (not sure if this still applies with Windows 7 but definitely can happen with earlier versions of Windows except Server 2008 IIRC)
 
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Rroff said:
Actually hes not entirely a moron, tho the chance of damage is very very unlikely, but if the HDD has a corrupt ntfs.sys file on it it can potentially crash the host OS and if it has an infected ntfs.sys it could even infect your system with a rootkit or virus.
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Chances are this never crossed his friend's mind. He is just giving the whole 'it will damage my pc omg' when really he hasn't a clue.
 
mglover070588 said:
Chances are this never crossed his friend's mind. He is just giving the whole 'it will damage my pc omg' when really he hasn't a clue.
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Oh I'm pretty sure it didn't cross his mind... but its not quite as cut and dried as people think :S due to MS being a bit silly.
 
put it in a hard drive enclosure and tell him there is a load of films, music and *gentleman's special interest* on it and i guarantee he will let you plug it in ;)

:p :p :p
 
Rroff said:
Actually hes not entirely a moron, tho the chance of damage is very very unlikely, but if the HDD has a corrupt ntfs.sys file on it it can potentially crash the host OS and if it has an infected ntfs.sys it could even infect your system with a rootkit or virus. (not sure if this still applies with Windows 7 but definitely can happen with earlier versions of Windows except Server 2008 IIRC)
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You would always boot from a stand alone OS on a disc or USB stick with the PC's own hard drive disconnected. I don't think anyone would just plug in the damaged drive and boot it up...
 
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