Question for KONY - or anyone else who happens to be a technicalgenius...

[Effty]

Hey,

You've helped me out before, except now I'm posting with (at least part)
of my real name in view.

My gf killed her laptop. It's a gateway solo 1450. She dropped it on
the *AC in plug* which broke off a piece of the motherboard.

Good news is that she bought a new (very nice!) Toshiba widescreen thing
with bells and whistles out the wazoo.

I thought I'd surprise her by putting her old hard drive in an external
enclosure so she could still have her old files and what not. Seems
like a relatively simple procedure. $15-$20 USB enclosure.

The question here is, well, since the old thing used to be a boot drive,
will I be able to reconstruct it into USB drive (and keep the files
onboard intact) ...without having to do too much work?

I'm imagining that I will probably have to mount the drive inside my PC
as a boot drive and remove the files she wants to keep (mostly music
files) then mount the thing inside the enclosure and reformat it before
it can be used as an external drive. Then I can dump her files back on
it and wrap the thing up. (picture me getting lots of kisses here...)

Is my thinking unsound? Any shortcuts you can think of? Advice?

Thanks in advance,
-John Effty

 

[philo]

Hey,

You've helped me out before, except now I'm posting with (at least part)
of my real name in view.

My gf killed her laptop. It's a gateway solo 1450. She dropped it on
the *AC in plug* which broke off a piece of the motherboard.

Good news is that she bought a new (very nice!) Toshiba widescreen thing
with bells and whistles out the wazoo.

I thought I'd surprise her by putting her old hard drive in an external
enclosure so she could still have her old files and what not. Seems
like a relatively simple procedure. $15-$20 USB enclosure.

<snip>



that will work fine...
just put the drive in a USB enclosure and she can access files on it
without having to do anything else...
(if the drive is NTFS, this of course assumes the new machine
will be XP or Win2k)
of course with the laptop drive...you will probably need an adaptor
if the enclosure has a standard ide data cable in it

 

[Effty]

Effty wrote:



that will work fine...
just put the drive in a USB enclosure and she can access files on it
without having to do anything else...
(if the drive is NTFS, this of course assumes the new machine
will be XP or Win2k)
of course with the laptop drive...you will probably need an adaptor
if the enclosure has a standard ide data cable in it

I'm guessing it's NFTS because the laptop came with XP, but I also know
that XP gets cranky if you have it on two separate drives on the same
machine. I imagine that the USB overall is more forgiving in that
respect because it's not involved in the boot procedure.

But, they make enclosures specifically for 2.5" (44pin?) drives,
provided they are not over 9.5mm thick...

http://secure.newegg.com/NewVersion/FeedBack/CustRatingReview.asp?Item=N82E16817155704

I'm just scared that the machine is going to barf when it sees the
Windows files, but from what I am seeing ...probably not.

Thanks!

-John

 

[kony]

Hey,

You've helped me out before, except now I'm posting with (at least part)
of my real name in view.

Hah! It was all a clever ploy so our agents could find you!

My gf killed her laptop. It's a gateway solo 1450. She dropped it on
the *AC in plug* which broke off a piece of the motherboard.

MIght be worth something on ebay as "As-is, salvage". Just
be sure to accurately describe damage as well as possible so
buyer knows.

Good news is that she bought a new (very nice!) Toshiba widescreen thing
with bells and whistles out the wazoo.

I thought I'd surprise her by putting her old hard drive in an external
enclosure so she could still have her old files and what not. Seems
like a relatively simple procedure. $15-$20 USB enclosure.

The question here is, well, since the old thing used to be a boot drive,
will I be able to reconstruct it into USB drive (and keep the files
onboard intact) ...without having to do too much work?

Yes, just put the drive in the enclosure, at a minimum that
is all that is needed.

I'm imagining that I will probably have to mount the drive inside my PC
as a boot drive and remove the files she wants to keep (mostly music
files) then mount the thing inside the enclosure and reformat it before
it can be used as an external drive.

That is not necessary, but might be a good idea and is what
I would do. Well, exactly what i'd do is:

Connect drive to a desktop system (you'll need a
notebook-desktop IDE adapter for this, a ~ $4 part on the
'net). Copy files over to the PC HDD, then put them on
removable (CDR or DVD) media if you think she'd find it
useful... but it's not necessary per se.

Run the HDD manufacturer's diagnostics on the drive... again
not necessary but prudent to be sure it still works after
system was dropped... nothing worse than trying something
new and having additional problems with the hardware.

Once the drive checks out ok you can (before or after that
point) reformat it to get rid of the junk (windows &
applications) .

Then I can dump her files back on
it and wrap the thing up. (picture me getting lots of kisses here...)

Yes, exactly... but the job is worth more than kisses that
you should get anyway. ;-)

Is my thinking unsound? Any shortcuts you can think of? Advice?

The shortcut would be to just install the drive in the
enclosure as-is and tell her that she can delete anything
she doesn't need (everything except for the personal
files/etc).

 

[Richard Lowen]

............ I also know
that XP gets cranky if you have it on two separate drives on the same
machine. I imagine that the USB overall is more forgiving in that
respect because it's not involved in the boot procedure.

My Windows XP Pro runs 3 hard drives & it's not cranky. Thats both
before & after SP2. Where did you hear that it got cranky?


Rick Lowen
(aka Lowbrau)

 

[Effty]

On Fri, 22 Apr 2005 20:26:52 GMT, Effty

Hah! It was all a clever ploy so our agents could find you!

These are not the droids you are looking for.

Seems like a common injury. Really no way to fix it, just have to buy a
new board. They look kind of expensive/well sought after on ebay.

MIght be worth something on ebay as "As-is, salvage". Just
be sure to accurately describe damage as well as possible so
buyer knows.

I'm actually anxious to part the thing out on ebay. It ran just fine
after the accident on battery power. Unfortunately my gf didn't think
to BACK UP HER FILES on CD in that time!!! ...I honestly don't
understand women sometimes.

Yes, exactly... but the job is worth more than kisses that
you should get anyway. ;-)

In this case "kisses" is a euphemism. And, yes, I am a dirty old man.

(laughing out loud...)

-John Effty

 

[Effty]

My Windows XP Pro runs 3 hard drives & it's not cranky. Thats both
before & after SP2. Where did you hear that it got cranky?

Rick Lowen
(aka Lowbrau)

You don't have 3 registered/activated copies of XP on different drives
on the same machine do you? That's what I'm talking about. Actually,
I'm looking forward to seeing exactly what I will and what I won't be
able to "see" on the other drive, but at the moment I am waiting on
NewEgg. In a perfect world XP should ignore any LOCAL SETTINGS on the
other drive, but Microsoft's money grubbing paranoia has reched new
heights with XP, so I expect to see a few error messages.

I'll post more on this in 4-5 days when I have the drive in it's happy
new home.

-John Effty

 

[rivalarrival]

John,

Put the drive in the enclosure. If it's not booting from the USB
drive, windows isn't going to care what files are on it.

I bought an 80 gig recently, installed XP Pro on it, and then
re-installed the 40 gig it came with (which had XP Home) without
losing any data... Come to think of it, at one point I had an old 6
gig with Win2K also installed in the same machine, with the other 2
drives...

Just do it. It'll work great.