Dual Boot help..

[jereli]

ok so i am new here to the forum and hopefully you guys can help me out.

so i have a laptop running windows vista and i have a desktop running windows xp. Now, the question is, can i remove the hard drive from my desktop and run it externally on my laptop with out having to format the hard drive?

i would like to use my laptop to see the files on my desktops hard drive. Possible? i beleive i read somewhere saying that its possible.

any help appreciated.

 

[dale]

Yes, certainly. And there are many ways to do this. The way I did it was to get an external adapter (USB 2.0-HDD) and simply plug the HDD into the adapter.

This is not a stable solution though, as you really shouldn't be able to move the HDD around when you are reading from or writing to it. So I hope this setup is only temporal for you.

 

[jereli]

well thats what I tried. I have an adapter that goes from sata to two usb connectors but my laptop does not recognize it or anything when I plug it in.

 

[dale]

Did it come with drivers that you could install? What brand/model is the adapter?

 

[Rackmountsales]

You will have a performance hit from USB from any external drive.
You're also going to loose the portability of having a notebook because the 3.5" drive enclosure will require a receptacle to power it.

 

[jmacavali]

Do you have power to the hard drive? Sometimes you have to play around with whether the hard drive has power and then is plugged into the USB or whether you plug it into the USB and then power it on (at least I do when I use my adapter).

You won't be able to boot from the OS'es on the hard drive, but you will be able to access the file system and get any files you might need off of the drive.

 

[dale]

Rackmountsales and jmacavali raised a very good point.

Check the model of your HDD for the current required to get it running.

Then check the output you get from your USB port. You might need an external power source. I did.