- 1). Place an antistatic strap around your wrist and connect the other end of the strap to a metal object to prevent a static discharge from passing from your body to the PC while transferring the drive.
- 2). Turn off the power to the PC containing the drive and remove the power cord from the rear of the power supply.
- 3). Remove the screws securing the left-side PC case cover in place. Slide the cover back from the panel at the front of the case and lift the cover from the case to access the inside of the PC.
- 4). Remove data and power cable from the rear of the hard drive. Follow the data cable to its base on the motherboard and then remove the cable from the motherboard as well.
- 5). Unscrew the screws securing the hard drive within the drive bay and set them aside for reuse. Depending upon case design, you may have to remove the cover on the other side of the PC case to reach a set of securing hard drive screws. If so, use the same process as that used to remove the first case cover.
- 6). Slide the hard drive from the hard drive bay within the case to remove it and place the drive onto the antistatic mat to protect it from stray static electricity.
- 7). Open the case cover in the second PC to which you wish to transfer the hard drive.
- 8). Set the jumpers of the hard drive for use in the new case. If using an IDE drive, choose a solo setting if you're mounting the drive alone in an IDE cable, or choose a master or slave setting if the drive is to be mounted on the same cable as an already installed drive. Choose master if placing the drive on the first data connection socket on an IDE data cable with a second drive present. Choose slave if connecting the drive to the second data connection socket with an existing system drive already connected to the first connector. SATA drives require no jumper settings.
- 9). Slide the hard drive into an open drive bay in the second PC. Secure the drive in place using the screws used to secure the drive in the first PC.
- 10
Connect the data cable to drive. Connect to an existing IDE cable if the drive is an IDE drive used as either a master drive or a slave. If using a SATA drive, or attaching a solo IDE drive, connect the other end of the data cable to the motherboard. Connect the power cable from the power supply to the power connector at the rear of the drive. - 11
Close the PC cases and reattach the power cords. Turn on the second PC to test the drive transfer. Wait for the operating system to boot. After a correct transfer, the drive is recognized by the system and usable.
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