HDD swapping

[ArkiStan]

Hi people. I want to burn all of my MP3s onto a CD. So I'm gonna disconnect my HDD and bring it over to my friend's house, cause he has a CD burner. After I connect my HDD to his computer, what do I do?? The computer is fairly new (Compaq, 1 year old?). Will it automatically recognize my HDD when I plug it in? Is there any setup procedure I must go through?

[hapoo]

after you connect it to his computer turn on the computer and enter the bios (usually by pressing the delete button, or F1/F2). Then go the the "auto hard drive detection" option and let the bios find the hard drive. after that save the settings restart and your set. just remember to redo the procedure after your done.

[Dave_7]

Set the jumpers on your drive to the "SLA" or "SLV" position and connect it on the middle IDE connector of of his HD IDE chain... not the one on the end (where his HD is probably already connected). In other words... leave his connected as-is.

Setting the jumpers on your drive to slave (as opposed to master) will make your drive appear as a "D" drive on his computer and won't function as a "Windows" drive (i.e. it won't boot into your OS... it's still boot into his OS).

If you've never fiddled with the jumpers on a HD before, there should be a picture on the drive itself showing the positions of the different settings (Master, Slave, Cable-Select). You want slave.




Dave.

[ArkiStan]

thanks guys for the speedy replies. Are those both different options, or is it required to do both the things that you guys suggested?

[Dave_7]

You should do both. Prepare your HD first (a-la my first reply), then follow hapoo's post. Odds are that your friend's BIOS is already configured the way it'll need be (i.e. the way hapoo said).

So the BIOS tweaking will more likely be just a double-check that "Primary Slave" device is setup as "Auto" in his BIOS. But it will, indeed, need to be setup that way for it to work. What I'm saying is that it probably already is.

Actually... you could just plug in your re-jumpered drive to his computer... boot it, and if your drive shows up as the "D" drive in Windows... then you should be just fine. Otherwise, goto the BIOS.

Happy hunting!



Dave.

[ArkiStan]

thanks!

[Markel]

If things fail to work after you connect your (slave) drive, you may want to check to be sure that your friend's drive is jumpered as master. Some hard drives have a default setting which says they are a "single" drive.

[ArkiStan]

Worked like a charm!! Thanks for everybody's help!!