restoring hard drive

  • Thread starter Thread starter Peter
  • Start date Start date
P

Peter

We had a Dell notebook that stopped working due to water damage. The
hard drive is ok and we would like to hopefully put the data from the
hard drive onto a toshiba notebook. I'm assuming Dell/Microsoft tie
WinXP to there notebooks so wanted to know if there was a way to put
this data onto the Toshiba without having to reinstall all the
programs.

Thanks,
Pete
 
Peter said:
We had a Dell notebook that stopped working due to water damage.
The hard drive is ok and we would like to hopefully put the data from
the hard drive onto a toshiba notebook. I'm assuming Dell/Microsoft
tie WinXP to there notebooks
Click to expand...

Not really. It isnt trivial to do an install in place without an XP
distribution CD
tho and you will likely need to do that just because the chipset has
changed.
so wanted to know if there was a way to put this data onto
the Toshiba without having to reinstall all the programs.
Click to expand...

Its a little fiddly to do with just a notebook, but it is possible.

One approach is to get a USB2 external case or adapter
and use that to allow the Dell hard drive to be seen on
the Toshiba and copy the data across in that config.
 
Previously Peter said:
We had a Dell notebook that stopped working due to water damage. The
hard drive is ok and we would like to hopefully put the data from the
hard drive onto a toshiba notebook. I'm assuming Dell/Microsoft tie
WinXP to there notebooks so wanted to know if there was a way to put
this data onto the Toshiba without having to reinstall all the
programs.
Click to expand...

Connect the HDD as secondary IDE disk in a real computer (lets
face it: Notebooks are convenient, but they are a bit inflexible
on the hardware side...) instead. Then you can copy off the files.

Arno
 
Connect the HDD as secondary IDE disk in a real computer (lets
face it: Notebooks are convenient, but they are a bit inflexible
on the hardware side...) instead. Then you can copy off the files.
Click to expand...

Just putting the HD into a new laptop will almost always cause
trouble, depending on how different the laptops are. Generally, a
WinXP repair install will fix it and let it work, but there's some
risk that it will bollix up the whole thing.

If the data's particularly important to you, I'd definitely hook it to
a normal computer and either copy the data off or image it.
 
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