New laptop wont boot from old hardrive?

bushykangaroo

Hey folks, can anyone help me with this issue.

Basically, bought a new Acer laptop and am trying to get it to boot off the hard drive from my old dell laptop.

I bought a Usb hd caddy thing to aid booting from the old hd, old hd has windows Xp and new one has windows 7.

Ive gone into the bios of the Acer and set the boot order to Usb hdd, usb fdd, etc,,, and put the Ide hd to the last option.

But the laptop just keeps skipping the usb drive and boots from the main hd.

When i look in "my computer" the usb hd caddy isnt shown despite the light on the caddy being lit up.

Anyone got any ideas why it wont boot?

ricman

the simplest thing is put the old hd in the acer, set boot = cd ,cd=o, first boot and install win7 from a cd or windows xp,or vista.IS THE old hd compatible,ie most laptops use sata hds nowadays.
You COULD TRY JUST copying a windows os disk cdrom to the old hd in the caddy using a pc, eg connect caddy net centre pc.erase all the boot files on the old hd first,or just format it in ntfs .WHY do you wanna use the old hd, i presume the new acer has win7 and a large hd.IT makes no sense, it may be tough to get drivers if you are installing xp,or older os on the old hardrive.
if i buy a new pc i prefer to run the latest os , its designed for, its sometimes very hard to get old drivers for a laptop, unless its a dell.
you could end up with the acer os installed ,wifi card,or pcmia slot not working cos you cant get the driver file for vista or xp.
its possible to get a linux cd,eg mint that runs from the cd disk, that,ll see any caddy ,external drive.
google mint livecd os ,fits on 1 cdr 700meg disk.

eirman

Windows generally doesn't allow systems to boot from a USB. Otherwise it would become windows portable!

You'll need to locate a workaround. Search for "boot windows xp from usb"

bushykangaroo

The reason im trying to get the new laptop to boot off the old Hd is because I need my Cv and cover letters off it. The old laptop has a broken power cable socket and is dangerous to use as its smoking/sparking hence I bought a new laptop.

The old dell hd wont plug directly into the Acer's Hd place as the connectors are different.

All i want to do is boot my laptop off the old hd, copy my cv's onto a usb memory key and then put the proper new hd back in.

But the Acer wont recognise the usb caddy Hd

bushykangaroo

ricman wrote: »

the simplest thing is put the old hd in the acer, set boot = cd ,cd=o, first boot and install win7 from a cd or windows xp,or vista.IS THE old hd compatible,ie most laptops use sata hds nowadays.
You COULD TRY JUST copying a windows os disk cdrom to the old hd in the caddy using a pc, eg connect caddy net centre pc.erase all the boot files on the old hd first,or just format it in ntfs .WHY do you wanna use the old hd, i presume the new acer has win7 and a large hd.IT makes no sense, it may be tough to get drivers if you are installing xp,or older os on the old hardrive.
if i buy a new pc i prefer to run the latest os , its designed for, its sometimes very hard to get old drivers for a laptop, unless its a dell.
you could end up with the acer os installed ,wifi card,or pcmia slot not working cos you cant get the driver file for vista or xp.
its possible to get a linux cd,eg mint that runs from the cd disk, that,ll see any caddy ,external drive.
google mint livecd os ,fits on 1 cdr 700meg disk.

My new laptop didnt come with a seperate windows7 cd, its just preinstalled. I wouldnt know how to do any of what you suggested there, Im not the best wit hall that sort of stuff.

I think what i need to do is get the lend of a Dell laptop and just plug my hd into it.

eirman

Forget about booting from from the caddy ... you said that the new laptop does not recognise it anyway. If the caddy is usb powered you generally need two leads to two usb ports (data+power)

Get another caddy or try another computer

ricman

Plug the caddy into a pc, copy the data to cdrs,burn x amount of cdrs ,1 cdr =700meg ,40gig hd= 55 cds approx.IS there data you need on the dell hd.
MOST pcs in library or netcafes have cdburners, cdrw drives,or dvd burners.
in aldi 50cdrs cost 7 euro, ten dvdrs cost 3 euro.1 DVDR = 4 gigabyte.
ITS easier to burn dvdrs.

azezil

@ bushykangaroo - even if you could get it to boot from the old Dell hard drive it's highly unlikely to work.

Simply connecting the old drive, in the caddy, to your new computer should work, it should just show up as another drive in explorer. If it doesn't, check that all the cables are connected properly, some caddies have 2 usb cables, some have a seperate power supply etc., still not working try another computer like a net café as suggested above, if that doesn't work, chances are the old hard drive or the caddy is knackered.

NeitherJohn

You might have to assign the drive a letter. I was in the same position last year when my old laptop blew up. My new Windows 7 64-bit system wouldn't recognise the drive, even though my Xbox 360 and my dad's laptop recognised it just fine.


To assign a drive letter to a drive in Windows 7, make sure the drive is plugged in and the light on the caddy is lit, then do the following.

1.Start Menu
2. Right click Computer
3. Click Manage
4. In the window that pops up, on the left hand pane, near the bottom will be a setting called "Disk Management". Click that once.
5. Look for your drive in the right hand pane then. You should be able to spot it by the size of the drive in gigabytes

Ignore any drive that has (Boot, Page File, Crash Dump, Primary Partition) in brackets.

6.Right click your drive and then click "Change drive letters and paths"
7.Click "add" on the window that comes up, and give the drive a letter. eg Pick R.
7. Click Ok.

After that then your drive should power up and be recognised. If it doesn't, then it's probably bricked unfortunately!

k123456

One thing you can try if you have access to a desktop.

Your drive will be either sata or ide, assuming it's sata, on a desktop PC, unplug cd drive (sata) plug HDD instead of the cd, boot up PC, you should be able to browse your drive

bushykangaroo

Im such a tit, I didnt realise I had to plug the 2 usb cables in , I was wondering what the other cable was for, just assummed it was to allow you plug another hd into it or something. So 1 is for data and the other power Ya learn something new everyday.

I shall try it again later and see if it works. Cheers!

bushykangaroo

I tried it with both usb cables plugged in and it still didnt boot from it, however I could see the caddy hd in "My Computer" and I could see all my old documents, and just copied them over.

Howcome, i can access the hd like this, the lad in the shop told me i'd have to boot from the old hd to view anything on it which i thought would be the case aswell.

Cheers for the help

bette

bushykangaroo wrote: »

I tried it with both usb cables plugged in and it still didnt boot from it, however I could see the caddy hd in "My Computer" and I could see all my old documents, and just copied them over.

Howcome, i can access the hd like this, the lad in the shop told me i'd have to boot from the old hd to view anything on it which i thought would be the case aswell.

Cheers for the help

Don't tell us you bought the yoke in PC World!

bonzodog2

Get an external enclosure/case/cable for the disk from your old laptop to get the files you need

massy086

the lad in the shop told me i'd have to boot from the old hd to view anything on it


LMFAO

Skerries

talking through his arse, the way you did it was the right way
plug it in and get the data off it and job done, now you can format it and use it as an external drive