ide hard drive in another mobo

[thatguyoverther]

ok ive got this **** dell computer and i wanna but a new one. im low on money and i wanna kno if i can use my hard drive now in the comp im gonna build...i dont know what type of hard drive mine now is cuz on dell.com they just say "0X438 HARD DRIVE, 30GB, IDE (INTEGRATED DRIVE ELECTRONICS), 1N, 7.2K, WD-XL40S"

the mobo i want says "IDE 2 x ATA 133/100 IDE connectors supporting up to 4 IDE devices"

by the way my computer model is a dimension 2350 if that helps

[BUFF]

Shouldn't be a problem using it in a new PC (you'll have to reinstall/repair install Windows).

[Slamdog]

if you get another intel based machine then you should get away without repairing windows. It works for me!. Admittedly, it isn't the ideal solution but a useful way to get at your data in an emergency.

You won't have a problem ripping the drive out of the dell and using it in another machine. It would be better to re-install windows completely from scratch though.

[thatguyoverther]

if you get another intel based machine then you should get away without repairing windows. It works for me!. Admittedly, it isn't the ideal solution but a useful way to get at your data in an emergency.

You won't have a problem ripping the drive out of the dell and using it in another machine. It would be better to re-install windows completely from scratch though.


well its gonna be an amd based system so i guess that sucks but whatever what will happen if i dont reinstallwindows? will it like crash?

[BUFF]

It won't boot.

[thatguyoverther]

It won't boot.

ah i see and im gonna stick another question in here:

can u use 2 types of ram at once? i.e. 512 pc3200 512 pc2100?


and................... did i leave anything out? im not buyin a hard drive, or cd rom

Broadway com Black ATX Mid Tower Case With 500W PSU, Model "82-4HL-Black"
$46.50

Rosewill nVIDIA GeForce FX 5900XT Video Card, 128MB DDR, 256-Bit, TV-Out+DVI, 8X AGP Model "RW59XT-128D" -RETAIL
$180.00

Geil Value Series 184 Pin 512MB DDR PC-3200
$406.00

GIGABYTE "GA-K8NS Ultra-939" NVIDIA nForce3 ULTRA Chipset Motherboard For AMD Socket 939 CPU -RETAIL

AMD Athlon 64 3400+, 512KB L2 Cache 939-Pin 64-bit Processor - OEM

and lol........by it wont boot ya mean it wont start windows or the whole computer? i can boot off a windows setup disc right?

[BUFF]

It won't boot Windows because it will be looking for hardware from your old board which won't be there & it won't have drivers for the hardware on your new board.
What you could try is to uninstall the motherboard, gfx drivers etc. on your old sytem before you shut it down & tear it apart.
Ideally with a change as big as you are doing you should do a fresh install though.

You can run 2 different types of RAM at once but only at the speed of the lowest e.g. if you run PC2100 & PC3200 you will have to run it all at the speed of the PC2100.
Running PC2100 on that platform obviously won't give you quite the same performance as running PC3200 - I would guess that you will lose 10-15%.

[thatguyoverther]

ok so it wont load cuz the drivers but why does a fresh install work? that cant have drivers...thats just out of cuiriosity

and bout the ram would i be best off with 1gig pc2100 or 512meg pc3200? the motherboard has dual channel i dont kno if thatll run btter with 2 sticks than 1 but...explain dul channel also lol i have lots o questions

[BUFF]

A fresh install includes basic generic drivers for things like gfx card, ide etc. - they won't give the best performance & it won't enable all your hardware but they will run. You then apply the specific drivers for your hardware to enable all functions, increase performance etc.
When you have installed all the specific drivers for your hardware you have a customised install for that setup & anything radically different will cause Windows to complain.

Dual Channel will improve performance but not by a lot - maybe 5% on average over single channel (more on some apps less on others) - as the AMD64 isn't bandwidth challenged to start with.
i would probably start out with 1x512Mb stick of PC3200 & plan to add another when you can afford it.

[stdPikachu]

The most annoying thing is that there's no reason windows can't fall back onto the generic drivers when it detects a change in hardware. Unfortunately, it was so designed that the hardware detection fails when the hardware changes :rolleyes:

[thatguyoverther]

k thanx guys u can count on it that ull be seing many more posts with a lot of basic questions from me :D