Computer hard drive question

I know this is the wrong place to ask this,but I figure this forum has someone who knows how to solve this problem.
My old computer quit running. I think the CPU fan quit,and fried the CPU. I am hoping my hard drive is still good,and I would like to install it as a second hard drive on another computer,so I can pull off some stuff I stupidly did not back up.
How can I do this without having to reformat this drive? I had it installed in another computer,and I kept getting prompts to format this drive when I tried to access it.
If I installed it in an external housing with a USB connection,would my computer still want to format this drive?

I just did it. No need to do anything to the old drive other than maybe master/slave settings. Put it on the same bus as your optical drive. YMMV

Larry

If the OS wants to reformat the hard drive, it could mean two things come into play -- different drivers under the new OS, or corrupt data. You can attempt to see if it's the drivers by trying something like LiveCD Linux, which you burn to a disk, and reboot with the CD in the tray. Try Knoppix or Slax. If it works, you may be able to copy the files off (unless you're using NTFS on the new drive, in which case you'll need the Captive drivers).

Well, maybe that is the problem. The old HD is from an WinXP machine, and I was trying to install it in a computer running Win Me. (The computer I'm typing this on is a new XP one, but I didn't want to horse around with it and possibly screw up my access to the web.

:thumbsup: carrot! I probably just got lucky. (Both old HDD and new box were NTFS.)

OT but I just resolved a major problem tonight. The new Crashpaq came with Norton Internet Security installed which I found I had to turn off to run SolidWorks or access downloads from Uncle Bill. It even messed with OE and the latest Firefox I just installed. I was to the point of downloading AVG and uninstalling it when I opened it and discovered it included its own firewall. I was already running ZA Pro. :green: I shut off the Norton firewall and everything now seems OK.

Larry

NTFS drives can't be read by old OSes like WinME (and ME blows anyway). You need to try it on a Win2K or XP PC. I'm sure all your data is still there.

Either install it as master alone on the secondary IDE channel or add it to the primary as a slave.

NTFS can only be read by NT-based OSes, as far as Windows goes -- so that means NT/2K/XP/Vista only. ME is part of the Windows 9x family and does not support NTFS.

That was it. I turned off this computer, and plugged in the old HD as a slave. I was able to start it up and pull the data I needed off the old HD with no problem. I wish I had asked you guys sooner instead of wasting my time all evening fooling with something that was never going to work. Thank you all very much

What type of processor do you have? Most modern processors (Specific Athlon XPs, Pentium 3s, Pentium 4s, Athlon 64s, Opertons... Etc) have an automatic throttle or shutdown at critical temperatures

Jeep44, I'm glad you got lucky too! I've had my happy a** saved here in the Cafe more than once with computer stuff. (was_JLS- you lurking? )

Larry

My old computer that took a dump was an eMachines Celeron 1.7Ghz,about 4 years old.