Please help!

brown614

New Member
Let me start by apologizing, I know NOTHING about my PC, but I am in desperate need of some help.

I recently had to replace my motherboard. I moved everything from my main hard drive over to a spare hard drive I have. So I replaced the motherboard, reloaded my operating system, connected the main drive and the extra hard drive, but when I boot the computer it is trying to boot from the extra drive. The extra drive at one time was a main hard drive for a previous computer... silly me, I didnt reformat it before I put it in my new computer to used as a back-up...

So here is my dilemma, how do I get my stuff off the hard drive? I cant reformat it or ill lose EVERYTHING I own! I tried booting the system, then plugging in the extra drive, but it doesnt recognize it...

Please help, I have tried to follow some step by step online, but it doesnt necessarily pertain exactly to my situation, plus I dont understand alot of computer jargon.
 
Let me start by apologizing, I know NOTHING about my PC, but I am in desperate need of some help.

I recently had to replace my motherboard. I moved everything from my main hard drive over to a spare hard drive I have. So I replaced the motherboard, reloaded my operating system, connected the main drive and the extra hard drive, but when I boot the computer it is trying to boot from the extra drive. The extra drive at one time was a main hard drive for a previous computer... silly me, I didnt reformat it before I put it in my new computer to used as a back-up...

So here is my dilemma, how do I get my stuff off the hard drive? I cant reformat it or ill lose EVERYTHING I own! I tried booting the system, then plugging in the extra drive, but it doesnt recognize it...

Please help, I have tried to follow some step by step online, but it doesnt necessarily pertain exactly to my situation, plus I dont understand alot of computer jargon.

Set the jumper on the extra hard drive as slave and make sure the main drive is set to master. Then in the BIOS be sure the main HDD is selected to boot first over the extra one.
 
Awesome... I did some research and I understand the slave and master. Do I enter the BIOS screen during boot-up, and when im there, how do I navigate to where I can make sure my main HDD is whats booted first?
 
It should be set as primary boot or something similar. Make sure that you know what letters mean what drives.
 
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