Hi all.
My laptop's finally consigned to the bin.
I have an 8 yr old desktop running Win98 and, as a short-term measure, I want to get it running XP.
I don't have any XP discs (came pre-loaded onto laptop) and I'd like to use the laptop HD as the desktop's boot-drive.
I don't know if the Acer OEM XP will work on another system, but even if not I'd rather use the laptop HD than the tiny effort in the desktop if possible.
The desktop is, I think, E-IDE with the laptop SATA.
Does anyone know if I can buy leads and/or PCI controller cards etc that will let me use the laptop HD as the boot drive? Obviously I can connect via usb, but I want it to boot.
I've tried looking and can't find anything.
Cheers.
Full Version: Laptop Hd Into Desktop Pc
Hmm... thought I had answered this last night.
Technically you shouldn't have any problems with your desktop recognising the laptop HD. Whether it's IDE or SATA it doesn't really matter. Your desktop will no doubt be IDE based, in which case you will need to buy a PCI/SATA card and some cables to run to the HD. Most BIOS allow you to set that as the boot disk too.
The thing is, laptop HDs tend to be pretty small in comparison (<120GB) and they also tend to be the 2.5" HDs too, add in the cost of a SATA card and some cables and you could be as well just buying a new 3.5" HD, even a second hand one. Especially as solid state memory increases in use and drops in price, old 3.5" IDE drives are ten a penny.
The real problem will come from booting the same install of windows. Some Win installs store the hardware IDs of the main components on the machine and if it's dropped into a new machine with new hardware IDs it'll complain like buggery. If that happens, you could try repairing the OS install (put in your windows disc and select R at the menu) however I wouldn't hold out much hope. I could be wrong, I just think it will be unlikely to boot the same windows when attached.
So, overall, yes and no, although the question is whether it's worth all the effort.
Technically you shouldn't have any problems with your desktop recognising the laptop HD. Whether it's IDE or SATA it doesn't really matter. Your desktop will no doubt be IDE based, in which case you will need to buy a PCI/SATA card and some cables to run to the HD. Most BIOS allow you to set that as the boot disk too.
The thing is, laptop HDs tend to be pretty small in comparison (<120GB) and they also tend to be the 2.5" HDs too, add in the cost of a SATA card and some cables and you could be as well just buying a new 3.5" HD, even a second hand one. Especially as solid state memory increases in use and drops in price, old 3.5" IDE drives are ten a penny.
The real problem will come from booting the same install of windows. Some Win installs store the hardware IDs of the main components on the machine and if it's dropped into a new machine with new hardware IDs it'll complain like buggery. If that happens, you could try repairing the OS install (put in your windows disc and select R at the menu) however I wouldn't hold out much hope. I could be wrong, I just think it will be unlikely to boot the same windows when attached.
So, overall, yes and no, although the question is whether it's worth all the effort.
QUOTE (Ric @ Oct 6 2008, 14:03) 
Hmm... thought I had answered this last night.
Technically you shouldn't have any problems with your desktop recognising the laptop HD. Whether it's IDE or SATA it doesn't really matter. Your desktop will no doubt be IDE based, in which case you will need to buy a PCI/SATA card and some cables to run to the HD. Most BIOS allow you to set that as the boot disk too.
The thing is, laptop HDs tend to be pretty small in comparison (<120GB) and they also tend to be the 2.5" HDs too, add in the cost of a SATA card and some cables and you could be as well just buying a new 3.5" HD, even a second hand one. Especially as solid state memory increases in use and drops in price, old 3.5" IDE drives are ten a penny.
The real problem will come from booting the same install of windows. Some Win installs store the hardware IDs of the main components on the machine and if it's dropped into a new machine with new hardware IDs it'll complain like buggery. If that happens, you could try repairing the OS install (put in your windows disc and select R at the menu) however I wouldn't hold out much hope. I could be wrong, I just think it will be unlikely to boot the same windows when attached.
So, overall, yes and no, although the question is whether it's worth all the effort.
Technically you shouldn't have any problems with your desktop recognising the laptop HD. Whether it's IDE or SATA it doesn't really matter. Your desktop will no doubt be IDE based, in which case you will need to buy a PCI/SATA card and some cables to run to the HD. Most BIOS allow you to set that as the boot disk too.
The thing is, laptop HDs tend to be pretty small in comparison (<120GB) and they also tend to be the 2.5" HDs too, add in the cost of a SATA card and some cables and you could be as well just buying a new 3.5" HD, even a second hand one. Especially as solid state memory increases in use and drops in price, old 3.5" IDE drives are ten a penny.
The real problem will come from booting the same install of windows. Some Win installs store the hardware IDs of the main components on the machine and if it's dropped into a new machine with new hardware IDs it'll complain like buggery. If that happens, you could try repairing the OS install (put in your windows disc and select R at the menu) however I wouldn't hold out much hope. I could be wrong, I just think it will be unlikely to boot the same windows when attached.
So, overall, yes and no, although the question is whether it's worth all the effort.
He has no chance of getting it to boot or repair.
As mentioned before, the hardware ID's are recorded in the Windows installation. If you try to boot from that laptop disk on your desktop, you wont get very far.
Cheers guys.
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