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question about old hard drives

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DieFledermaus

DieFledermaus

Grizzled Veteran
Jan 5, 2006
246
1
#1
My old Pentium 3 computer died tonight.

It will boot, but I cannot get the monitor to recognize it at all.

Is there any chance that I will be able to take the hard drive from the Pent III computer, a Maxtor D740X-6L and get my Pent 4 computer to read it as a second hard drive or slave, etc?

My Pent III hard drive is connected by those really wide array cables. The new ones seem to be the smaller plugs. I see nothing that would accomidate the wide array cables on my Pent 4 mother board.

I know nothing about the insides of a computer really.

Thanks
 
#2
DieFledermaus said:
My old Pentium 3 computer died tonight.

It will boot, but I cannot get the monitor to recognize it at all.

Is there any chance that I will be able to take the hard drive from the Pent III computer, a Maxtor D740X-6L and get my Pent 4 computer to read it as a second hard drive or slave, etc?

My Pent III hard drive is connected by those really wide array cables. The new ones seem to be the smaller plugs. I see nothing that would accomidate the wide array cables on my Pent 4 mother board.

I know nothing about the insides of a computer really.

Thanks
Click to expand...
If they are NTSF files, I think tou will be OK. IDE Hard Drive yes?
 
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#4
DieFledermaus said:
Sorrry, do not know what NTSF files or IDE means.
Click to expand...

What operating system are you running on your P4? If it's Windows 2000 or XP, you are running the NTFS file system. I'm not sure if XP will read a FAT32 or FAT16 file system. All you can do it hook it up with a spare IDE cable and try. If XP can't read it, it just won't show up.
 
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#5
Almost certainly yes.

Most motherboards have connections for the two types of hard drive data cables in existance today. One is called SATA, the newer thin, round cable with a fairly small connector. The other is the older IDE flat, wide, often grey cable with a faily large connector on each end. Since you almost certainly have XP on your present PC and will be using XP on your new PC then it will have no trouble at all reading from it unless you damage it, so treat it carefully and you'll be fine.
 
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#6
Exactly what HotDang said.

Your operating system should have no problems reading the drive.

Your new motherboard may have a connector for the old drive, called IDE. If it doesn't, life might get a little bit interesting. You can add an inexpensive IDE controller to your computer, but that might be a little bit complicated, in the sense that you might have to juggle stuff so your new computer doesn't try to boot from the old hard drive.

Newegg.com offers some other options. Search for IDE SATA adapter. Note that some of these have only a few reviews, and some have a lot of awful reviews.

This one seems to have a lot of reviews, most of them good:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822998001
In other words, for $19, shipped, you can maybe solve your problem.

You should take a look and make certain you don't need some other accessory to mount the hard drive in your computer. You can use the old screws, yes. You might need rails (things to adapt a narrow hard drive to a wider hole in your case). You might also need a Y power adapter. Just do a quick physical check. Heck, you can even move your old hard drive over NOW, get it mounted, stretch a power cable to it, even before you get the IDE/SATA adapter. Then you now you've got what you need.
 
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#7
DieFledermaus said:
My old Pentium 3 computer died tonight.

It will boot, but I cannot get the monitor to recognize it at all.

Is there any chance that I will be able to take the hard drive from the Pent III computer, a Maxtor D740X-6L and get my Pent 4 computer to read it as a second hard drive or slave, etc?

My Pent III hard drive is connected by those really wide array cables. The new ones seem to be the smaller plugs. I see nothing that would accomidate the wide array cables on my Pent 4 mother board.

I know nothing about the insides of a computer really.

Thanks
Click to expand...


Your pentium4 has SATA (Serial ATA) Harddrive.

Your Pentium4 SHOULD still have IDE Connectors.

Usually, People will have their Harddrive on the SATA and have the CD-Rom on IDE

So... Check your P4 to see if your cdrom is on the same gray wide cable as your p3 harddrive.

If it is the same cable, check if your cdrom is set on master or slave.

If cdrom is on master, put ide hdd on slave or vice versa

Master and slave are controlled by jumpers on the device...
look carfully for the instructions as of what is master and slave.

Good luck
 
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#8
ah yes, now it makes sense.

The new one is SATA, in fact my replacement hard drive in it is SATA II.

But I do not have anything wide enough to accomidate the wide cable from the other drive on my mother board. Even my old computer had the hard drive's wide cable plugged into a PCI card of some kind.

But here is the rub, I thought about taking that PCI card out and putting it into my new computer, but there was a small, thin cable connecting it to the mother board. When I went to unplug the bit in the mother board I think it may have been perminantly attached and broke off.

Even if it was supposed to unplug the way it did (white bit with two tiny holes in it, leaving behind a tall black bit stuck on the board) there is nothing on my current mother board that equates to the where it was plugged in.

oh, both PCs were XP, one was Home and the other Pro.

Hmmmmm.
​
 
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#11
DieFledermaus said:
ah yes, now it makes sense.​


The new one is SATA, in fact my replacement hard drive in it is SATA II.​

But I do not have anything wide enough to accomidate the wide cable from the other drive on my mother board. Even my old computer had the hard drive's wide cable plugged into a PCI card of some kind.​

But here is the rub, I thought about taking that PCI card out and putting it into my new computer, but there was a small, thin cable connecting it to the mother board. When I went to unplug the bit in the mother board I think it may have been perminantly attached and broke off.​

Even if it was supposed to unplug the way it did (white bit with two tiny holes in it, leaving behind a tall black bit stuck on the board) there is nothing on my current mother board that equates to the where it was plugged in.​

oh, both PCs were XP, one was Home and the other Pro.​

Hmmmmm.​
Click to expand...

What kind of Pentium3 is it ??? I am guessing it is a Brand name like compaq...
Possibly it was a VERY Expensive computer.

ALL Pentium3 Motherboards have Intergraded IDE Controllers... in other words... long long gray cable going from mobo to harddrive and cdrom.

In your case, its PCI Card to Harddrive... so...

SOUNDS LIKE YOUR PENTIUM3 HAS A SCSI CARD AND A SCSI HARD DRIVE.

SCSI is a controller card, depending on how old or new it can be, you can put more then 10 devices on it...

The advantage of an SCSI is that the card does its own processing... so copy things from a SCSI Hard drive to another SCSI hard drive... your CPU will not even notice or care...

Ill stop boring everyone with useless details...

YOu should be able to put that card in your new pc... dont know why it goes to the mobo tho
_________________________________________________
My advice

Please, if you can, take that card out, and please post whatever detail you find on the card...

It might be worth selling on ebay or something considering a half decent SCSI card can cost around 100$ to 500$

Yes... that card alone can be triple the value of your crappy old p3...
 
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#12
I disagree with Permanent Marker. There's an absolutely minuscule chance that you had a SCSI drive.

Almost certainly you have IDE.

I'm wondering if perhaps that little cable that broke off was just two thin wires, probably red and black, with a nearly flat connector that was, on the wide point, just a bit smaller then a pencil?

If so, ... Probably the little cable that broke was just to support the hard-drive activity light. Don't worry about it. Your only real concerns are getting the IDE connector and the power hooked up.

Someone else brought up another point: What kind of connector goes into your CD-ROM/DVD drive? If it's about three inches wide, then you already have an IDE connector. If it is, there should be a second connector on the cable that can go into your old hard drive. Then you don't need to muck around with the old computer at all -- you won't need that card from your old computer.

Have you physically mounted your old hard drive into the computer yet? Again, it'll need power and screws, possibly mounting rails.
 
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#14
Boogerhead said:
I disagree with Permanent Marker. There's an absolutely minuscule chance that you had a SCSI drive.
Click to expand...

And I agree with you

Minuscule, but possible...

I have never in my life seen a Pentium3 Motherboard that does NOT have an intergraded IDE controller, yet I have worked as an IT for a school... and a classroom was FULL of IBM P3's... all those Identical IBM p3's had SCSI Cards and SCSI harddrives...

Why... I have no clue... I find it rather pointless (and stupid)
side note, one of those computer's scsi cards failed, we needed to get it replaced and the cost was 2 times the value of the pc... but we still had to get it because all classroom pc's had to be the same and we worked with having 1 Ghost image of the OS...


To the thread creator... If you can post a pic of your hardware... we can all help you better :)
 
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#15
PermenentMarker said:
all those Identical IBM p3's had SCSI Cards and SCSI harddrives...
Click to expand...

My favorite IBM-ism:
The very first production 386 computers (circa 1987 or so) were IBM PS/2 Model 80s. These computers came with all sorts of innovations, like the very first VGA cards, the very first 32-bit card architecture, and what were among the first 1.44mb floppy drives. They even had a case you could park a car on top of.

What they didn't have was a great design.

Most of these things wound up in server rooms, supporting 286 and older computers. In other words, no one "ever" sat at them and used them, until something broke. And when something broke, you went in there and booted off a floppy, or updated something off a floppy, or did something else with a floppy disk.

... and that's when you found out that IBM had put in an exhaust fan, but no air intake port. The only way for air to get into the box was through ... the floppy drive. And all that dust and debris was propelled right by the floppy drive's heads/sensor thingy, making DAMNED sure that, when you needed the floppy drive, it'd be toast and you'd be completely screwed.
 
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#16
I will check it out and reply, probably the weekend though.

It is not a "scuzzy". I got a regular hard drive and connected it via the secondary plug on the same data cable. I assume it would not work as a slave to the first drive if they were not the same thing.

The computer is a Dell, about five or six years old now I guess.

But I will look in both PCs and respond soon.

Thanks.
 
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#17
Hey yall

The card is an Ultra 66. I guess it talks to the motherboard for the hard drive. Dell's attempt to save money I guess.

But I put that card in my new PC along with its hard drive and I get

Ultra 66 Bios not installed

Then the PC boots off the regular hard drive.

Anyone know if I can forget about that Ultra 66 card and just have the hard drive read by the main drive?

The problem is the old one has the flat, wide cable and my comptuer is SATA II. So there is no place to plug it into the board.

Do they make adaptors so that wide cable will be read by the SATA II?

thanks
 
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