Hard Drive Help Needed

[DrCobweb]

Hey anyone out there! I need help involving my hard drive. I recently built a new computer with new part except for the hard drive. I had one that I salvaged from an older computer and I know it works cause tested it with another older computer. I'm pretty sure that it uses a sata 1 connection and my new mother board uses sata 3 and when I hook the too up, hehe, it goes to start windows and crashes, then reboots. Could the problem be with the sata cables. The other computer i tested the hard drive with to see if it works uses sata 1 connection and that works fine. Otherwise the computer is good, the bios boots fine and tells me all my ram and stuff is there but the stupid old hard drive just keeps crashing when it tries to load windows. Would be great to know cause i don't want to go out spending more money on another hard drive if thats not the problem. Overall, I guess I'm asking if sata is backwards compatible.

[TheSLSAMG]

Reinstall Windows.

[DrCobweb]

I don't mean to sound like a noob, but I wouldn't have the slightest idea how to do that. I don't have the CD for Windows. 

[typetheed]

woah, woah, wait... you are trying to boot the old windows installed on the old hard drive on the new pc?

 

If so, THAT is your problem... windows will only load on hardware that it had drivers for, and generally speaking, you can't just move hard drives over to new pc's and expect the windows install to work...

[Adak1]

If you can check your mobo booklet about sata 1 compatibility, that would be good. Also, during boot up, press the key to go into your BIOS settings. See if the HD is recognized by your mobo. My older sata drive required a separate driver installed first, before it would recognize my drive. You should have any drivers needed, in your mobo disk. If not, check for a driver d/l from the manufacturers (mobo) website.

 

Oh! Tell me you're not trying to just swap in a new Windows boot drive, from your old computer, without a new install!

 

You can do that ONLY if the old and new mobo's and all the attached devices and BIOS, are REALLY compatible, or exactly the same.

[DrCobweb]

I have done so and it seems that the sata connectors are compatible with sata 1.5gb/second so that shouldn't be the problem and the bios does seem to recognize the hard drive is there. It just gets stuck in this endless loop of trying to load widows, crashing, rebooting and then trying again.

[LogicalDrm]

Yup, reinstall you windows to solve that problem. And before you repeat what already is posted I'll give some advice.

 

First I hope you have made backups with old hardware. If not there's still time if you can boot from DVD/USB. Just get Linux Live edition and use that to backup old drive on new machine.

 

Next question is what windows do you have and was it preinstalled on previous machine? To continue that question, is it branded machine like HP, DELL etc.? Reason why I ask this is because you have said that you don't have install dvd. Its more than likely that your windows is OEM and those are pretty annoying to reinstall on new machines. If you don't have branded license, you just need to download (legally ofc) install dvd .iso and burn it to dvd. Or USB but I use dvds. You can use non-branded OEM key in new machine but it may require phone activation. If your key is branded, you need to buy new copy of Windows.

 

The installation process is just clicking next until part where hdd must be formatted. You may choose option to save old files or do complete reformatting (usually best option).

[Eric1024]

Yeah, like others have said, it won't boot an old windows install on new hardware. You need to re-install windows, and for that you're going to need a windows install disk/usb stick. A bit shitty, but there's really no way around this.

 

Alternatively, install Linux.

 

Alternatively alternatively, get windows through less than legal means, but I would strongly reccomend against that.