Move laptop HD to desktop

[computerstu]

My laptop died and I'm trying to move the hard drive to my Desktop. I've got an adaptor cable, but have read that I need to convert the drive from master to slave, but don't know how to do that. I've attached a picture of the drive which shows a small diagram.
I tried install it without converting it, using the plugs from another drive, but when the computer booted it gave the error 'cannot find Drive 1, Drive 2, Drive 3. Any help would be very much appreciated.

 

[porterjw]

You have an IDE (thick ribbon) Hard Drive for your desktop I assume? Have you tried setting the jumper on your Desktop's primary HDD to Cable Select and then trying?

It won't harm your laptop drive if you put the jumper on the wrong pins, it will simply not be recognized at is had been doing, so you can play around with different jumper settings if you want. Just keep them going vertical and not across and things will be fine. Stupid question, but did you connect the power to the adapter?

 

[computerstu]

I'm not sure on the thick ribbon, nor am I convinced I know where the hd is in the desktop, its a Dell. I took the cables from one of the CD drive to use.

I'm not clear on the jumper part. Is it a separate piece? All of the pins on the laptop HD are covered by the adapter when its in place.

I believe I did connect the power, if its the white plug with a red and black wire on it.

 

[porterjw]

Sorry for the delay.

I'm not sure on the thick ribbon

This link is a standard IDE cable. Yours may look different, but it does the same thing.
http://www.itx-warehouse.co.uk/ProductImages/IDE Adaptor Cable 44Pin to 40Pin.jpg

nor am I convinced I know where the hd is in the desktop

Looks like this: http://www.knudde.be/ide_vs_scsi/ide.jpeg
(The white piece in the center area is a jumper.)

I'm not clear on the jumper part.

http://www.youcanbuildapc.com/images/harddrivejumper.jpg

This link shows the most common style of 2.5 to 3.5 disk adapter: http://cgi.ebay.com/Notebook-2-5-Ha...ameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem#ebayphotohosting
Yours may look different, but again, they all do the same thing. Notice the red and black wires; one end connect to the adapter itself, and the other to a 4-pin molex from your PSU. On that style of adapter, there is typically an 'R' on one side of the power pins that designates the red wire. It's possible you just mis-aligned it.

 

[computerstu]

Thanks very much for posting all that, I think I'm with you on all of it. What I ended up trying to do was to remove the hd from the desktop and replace it with the hd from the laptop. It seemed to boot ok, the desktop showed the view from the laptop, but it wouldn't recognize the mouse, leaving me no way to move the cursor. Am I doing something wrong?

I could leave the original hd in the desktop, and add the laptop hd, but I can't figure out how to change the laptop hd to slave. It doesn't have a jumper setup like the desktop hd does.
It has a group of 39 pins which covered by the adaptor, and there is another, separate group of 4 pins that are exposed but don't have any type of jumper. I tried to add it, as is, but got the error 'secondary master drive' (along those lines). Any help would be great, and I'm sorry for my ignorance on this

 

[porterjw]

It seemed to boot ok, the desktop showed the view from the laptop, but it wouldn't recognize the mouse, leaving me no way to move the cursor. Am I doing something wrong?

Nope, that sounds normal. Are you using a PS/2 mouse by chance (round-ish connector that plugs into the computer)? It appears to be lack of driver support. If you have a USB mouse (rectangle connector), Windows should recognize it and install generic drivers.

I could leave the original hd in the desktop, and add the laptop hd, but I can't figure out how to change the laptop hd to slave. It doesn't have a jumper setup like the desktop hd does.
It has a group of 39 pins which covered by the adaptor, and there is another, separate group of 4 pins that are exposed but don't have any type of jumper. I tried to add it, as is, but got the error 'secondary master drive' (along those lines). Any help would be great, and I'm sorry for my ignorance on this

If you look at your Desktop's HDD, it should show a jumper display on the lable, as well as what pins to place the jumper on for different settings. If you see a 'Cable Select' or 'Slave' setting, you may want to try that first, then attach the Laptop disk to the primary and the Desktop disk to the Secondary. If both are recognized during POST, you can press F8 (on most systems) or enter BIOS and choose to boot into the desktop disk (so your mouse will work if it's PS/2). Then it's just a matter of fixing BIOS settings or the MBR to enable the desktop disk to load by default.

Or, if you have another Desktop in your house, you could always pull the jumper from that HDD and see if it will fit on the Laptop disk in order to try and work things out.

 

[computerstu]

It seems to be working with the laptop hd as the master and desktop hd as the slave), though its incredibly slow. From the desktop view,
I can get the start menu to work, but the icons seem unresponsive, they all still have the white arrow key in the bottom lefthand corner. The hourglass shows up next to the cursor for a few seconds now and then. Is this just the nature of this desktop, which is a cheap, older HP?

 

[porterjw]

Well that's a start, and if you can access everything you need to, then I'd say stick with it. You got the mouse working, I guess?

Is this just the nature of this desktop, which is a cheap, older HP?

It could be because of a few things. Depending on how old the desktop is (or how new the Laptop is), you may be seeing a lower HDD speed (4200 RPM, 5400 RPM, 7200 RPM). Also, since you're running the OS from the Laptop Drive (or did you boot into the Desktop Drive even though it's set to Slave?) it may only have generic drivers installed. I'd do a Windows Update to make sure things are current, just in case.

Also, doing regular Disk Cleanups and Defragmentations are great ways to speed up your system. Keep in mind though that Windows will run slower the longer it's installed. I actually just posted about this last night; give me a minute or two to find the link.

Edit: Link - http://www.computerforum.com/111893-help-my-comp.html#post897771

 

[computerstu]

I've got things working, with the desktop hd as the master and the laptop hd as the slave (thanks to a staple for a jumper). Does it make any sense to fomat the desktop hd and install just the necessary software? There are an awful lot of programs loaded on it, and none of them will be used not. It takes it forever to boot up, I'm thinking this stuff is bogging it down.

The next question would be how do I format the hd and install the necesary software?

Thanks very much for your help.

 

[computerstu]

Well naturally, I took things too far. I wanted to format the C: (old desktop) drive. I deleted the partition, only to find that the my windows cd is damaged and can't be used to boot the computer. On booting, at some point it finds the laptop hd and begins loading windows, but then stops and there is a blue screen with text (error text, I think) which flashes on for a second, then everything starts over with the screen saying windows wasn't shutdown properly, choose a mode etc. I've tried everything from there, to no avail.

 

[porterjw]

desktop hd as the master and the laptop hd as the slave (thanks to a staple for a jumper)

Heh...I've never used a staple before. Gotta add that one to the books

Does it make any sense to format the desktop drive and install just the necessary software? There are an awful lot of programs loaded on it, and none of them will be used not. It takes it forever to boot up, I'm thinking this stuff is bogging it down.

Yes it makes sense to start fresh every now and then.

Post #10

Hmm... How is the Windows CD damaged? If it's scratched, you might be out of luck, but if it's smudged, you can wipe them away with a very soft cloth and give it another shot. Since you're going for a reinstall, if you get the CD to work, you may want to make a few partitions. There's a walk-through on how to do it once the CD has loaded. That way you can have the OS on one partition and all your files on another, in order to avoid any loss of data if something like this happens again. Plus, after everything is up and running and you have your data transferred, you could format the laptop drive and use that as backup; just a 'look-ahead thought'.

Try removing the Laptop drive from the system and try to install Windows again on the Desktop drive. You can always plug the Laptop drive in afterwards and Windows will recognize it.