2nd hand hard drive blank or not?

[alun]

Hi,

If you mean just copying files like.... music, photos, word documents etc then yes.

If you want to try and copy a whole 'operating system' then no, it won't work like that. It's basically tying the operating system to your system, eg the motherboard, all of its components etc.

So if that's what you mean, then a windows install on another compter that's working well, is installed with that computers motherboard etc etc and won't work on yours. If it did... i'd be very surprised!

[DIY_Johnny]

Not sure I'm, really following the post. Is your drive with the operating system Kaput or your 2nd drive, i.e. slave drive.

If you system won't recognise the 2nd drive (my didn't either) its worth checking the manufacturer's website. The usually have installation exe's to help.

If its you C: drive you can get5 a boot able disk and work from there

[Deleted-user-3]

cheers lads...
i was kind of hoping that if i copied the entire operating system off the kids poota i could sort of start it in safe mode and download the relevant drivers or whatever it needed and shove them in the wherever they go using dos... maybe not then, long shot anyway i supposes..

yeh its the main 'c' drive or going / supposed to be, i tried it with the jumper in the 'master' position and it just gave me the same 'no disc' error that the old kerput drive gave me so i stuck it in the middle position and still nothing so i stuck it in slave and it found it in the bios but only registered its size (20,435) or so mb.. 20gig..

telling a lie actually, when i stuck it in master i think at one point it seemed to findd a drive with about 7 gig? but still gave me a disk error???
fiino? just waiting to get hold of a windows disk at the mo... pointless going out and buying windows 7 or whatever for an old knacker like this one, might as well go and buy a new laptop with it already on? i only ever use it for coming on here and typing quotes etc...
o and playing online pool...