Slaving an Old Hard Drive to Dell Inspiron530

G

greenTiapan

New Member
Hello everybody,
I want to connect, as a slave, the hard drive from an old computer (Dell Dimension 4300) to my newer computer (Dell Inspiron 530). This will allow me to 1) access the old hard drive to acquire old data, and 2) to then use the old hard drive indefinitely as an additional disk that I can access just like I would a jump/pen drive (through 'My Computer'). I'm assuming it will appear there as another drive letter (once I go through BIOS and all that).

Details: The old hard drive from the 4300 is: Seagate Barracude ATA IV (40GB), model# ST340016A.

Next, when I open up the 530, I see that I'll need an IDE-to-SATA 'adapter.' The 4300's hard drive uses IDE (ribbon-looking cable) whereas the 530's hard drive uses something else (I'm assuming the reason it is different is because its a SATA).

So, after acquiring the IDE-to-SATA adapter, I will then make the connections inside the 530. This is what I need help with. I just want to make sure I do this correctly, so requesting specific instructions is what I'm doing here:

I'm assuming I...

1) connect the IDE-to-SATA adapter to an IDE cable (the IDE cable from inside the old 4300 should work fine, correct?). And then I connect the other side of the IDE cable to the old 4300's hard drive.

2) connect the adapter side of the IDE cable to the inside of the 530... but where?

3) Connect a Molex 4-pin y-splitter to the 4300's hard drive. But, inside the 530, what do I plug the other side(s) of the Molex into? Do I need another adapter for this?

4) Lastly, where do I get an IDE-to-SATA adapter? Best Buy doesn't have it (like always).

Thank you.
 
greenTiapan said:
Hello everybody,
I'm assuming I...

1) connect the IDE-to-SATA adapter to an IDE cable (the IDE cable from inside the old 4300 should work fine, correct?). And then I connect the other side of the IDE cable to the old 4300's hard drive.

2) connect the adapter side of the IDE cable to the inside of the 530... but where?

3) Connect a Molex 4-pin y-splitter to the 4300's hard drive. But, inside the 530, what do I plug the other side(s) of the Molex into? Do I need another adapter for this?

4) Lastly, where do I get an IDE-to-SATA adapter? Best Buy doesn't have it (like always).

Thank you.
Click to expand...
Your hard drive is IDE, so you'll need an IDE to SATA convertor. You'd connect the IDE side to where the ribbon cable would come out.

Do you have another drive in the 530? Is is connected to a SATA port?

The hard drive has a molex 4-pin, like so?

images


Your power supply should have some extra of these lying around. If no, you'll have to take the one on your other hard drive and split it, so the original hard drive gets power, but has another cable going to the other drive.

See if there's a microcenter around where you live, or a computer renaissance. If you have none of those, try a local computer shop. If still no luck, get one off www.newegg.com.
 
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