I am trying to get some data off of an old hard drive. I took apart my old computer (it died months ago) and took out the hard drive. I was about to install it into my new computer when I realized I don't know anything about putting computers togeather. Do I have to watch out for anything? There were two main wires going into the hard drive. One looks like a power source with yellow, black and red wires, the other was a thin and wide wire about two inches wide and an 1/8 of an inch thick.

Since I just want to retreive some data, can I unplug the same wires from my dvd rom player and plug in the hard drive? Will this accomplish the disired result? If you guys help me out, I will take back every computer nerd joke I ever told. Thankyou.

Please!!![noclue]

couple things...

(please read before doing) [:)]

IF you have a motherboard or computer manual, follow those directions.

>> Generic 'how-to' <<

Sounds like it's an IDE drive.

yes, the colored connector is power.
wide cable is the IDE cable.


You need to figure out where you are going to put this harddrive (HDD) in your working computer.

I suggest taking out your cd player like you already hinted to.. this will do an important thing for you;

if you look on the drive you remove, you'll most likely see a small jumper located at the back.  It will be In one of three positions, marked (hopefully) with:

SL....(Slave)
MA....(Master)
CS....(Cable Select)

DO NOT MESS WITH THE JUMPERS ON YOUR CD (or the drive you are temporarily removing)!!!!!

make note of it's position.

Find out where to make this jumper selection on the drive you want to install, and set it up just the same. (if you can't tell from looking at the drive, most hdd companies have manuals or the info on-line)


next thing you need to do is make sure your BIOS is set up correctly to access the HDD.

Watch for a message as soon as you power up, it will most likely tell you how to access BIOS or "hardware setup" (or something along those lines)

Depending on how old the system is, it may already be set up to "automatic".

Usually on the main bios screen, it'll have hardware/drive settings.  find the one where you CD (removed drive) was.  Make note of those settings (if not set to "automatic)

If you need to configure BIOS to automatic or the proper settings for the drive (they may be printed on the drive or available on-line)


once you have BIOS setup for the HDD, save your settings and reboot.


your OS will recognize the 'new' drive and allow you access to it.

Look at the back of your harddrive, the end with all the little needle pins. There should be a little plastic doohickey. Make sure this thing is sitting in the CS (cable select) position. (Look at your harddrive again, there should be a diagram).

Plug in the power cables. Plug in the data cable. Neither of them can be plugged in the wrong way unless by force.

Turn your computer back on. (You did turn it off first, didn't you?) If the posts on this board could be searched back longer than 6 months, I clearly remember having posted on this very topic before. Complete with pictures and diagrams.

First turn off the computer then open that baby up.  Touch the chassis of the computer to get ride of any static carge you may have.  Then remove the power cable from the back of the computer.  Next set the jumpers on the back of the drive to it's proper setting Slave if there is already a primary drive on the channel you wish to use.  IF the channel is empty you can select either master or slave.  

Then connect the 40 pin connector to the drive.  The wire with the stripe goes on pin one.  The power cable is the connector that has two black wires and a red and a yellow that can only go one way.

After that is done you can reattach the main power cable to the back of your computer and boot to winblows.  It should be detected at startup and you can copy all the data you want from it.

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