Making old hard drive (from another computer) an external BOOTABLE hard drive

Question

I did not think this would be difficult but I cannot find the information anywhere. 1.  My old laptop died (motherboard). 2.  I bought a Dell Inspiron 9300 laptop. 3.  I installed my old hard drive into an external case and connected to my Inspiron 9300 via USB 2.0. 4.  I configured my BIOS to look for a USB bootable device before the internal drive. 5.  My old drive is visible when I connect it after booting up the internal drive. 5a.  Problem:  Can not read any data from personal profile which was password protected (it is not even visible).  5b.  I had completed ALL of my installations on my old hard drive from my password protected profile, and can not run them unless I boot up from that drive. 6.  I am unable to boot up from my external old hard drive ONLY because it does not have the Inspiron 9300 drivers.   Question 1:  How do I get the drivers loaded onto my other hard drive?  Is this possible?  I am unable to find this particular question anywhere on the web, but I cannot be the only person that has had this issue.  Can anybody provide an answer, or point me to a site that has an answer.  (The main point of the question is not an Inspiron question.)   Question 2:  Supposing someone can help me with Question 1, where do I locate my Inspiron 9300 drivers that I need to install?  I did not receive a Drivers and Utilities CD or an Operating System CD.  I assume the drivers and there installation files are on the computer (somewhere) and if not I could download them (if I knew which ones to download).   Question 3:  Is it possible to install drivers on an external drive and make it work?  Wouldn't it need to write information to the registry on the external drive?   There has to be a way to do this.  Does anybody know? Message Edited by AltNrg4U on 01-16-2006 09:31 AM

ejn63 · Answer

You cannot boot the external drive using Windows. Try taking ownership of the files in question (note that this MUST be done in Safe Mode under XP Home).

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;308421&sd=tech

If that doesn't work, you'll have to consider data recovery.

AltNrg4U · Answer

ejn63,

Thank you!! You information has at least allowed me to get to my data again. I was able to take ownership of my folder via this method, and I am in the process of backing that information up to my internal hard drive right now.

If anyone has any ideas on being able to load the Inspiron 9300 drivers onto my old drive, that would be icing on the cake. I would dearly love to make that a bootable drive (the drivers are the only thing preventing this) WITHOUT reformatting or reloading all of my software.

I am thankful to at least access my old data. This is very helpful.

GreyMack · Answer

I can't address question #3, but drivers are available from the Drivers & Downloads section, on the support page behind the 'Notebook' tab at the top of this page. GM

AltNrg4U · Answer

Thank you rickmktg.   You may be right, but I guess I am still looking.  I know I had seen someone take a computer installation disk and start a reinstall, but then change the reinstall to a repair before it started.  This made the the other drive a bootable drive for the laptop.   However, 1.  My computer did not come with any installation disks. 2.  I was hoping there would be a direct method for updating the drivers on my old hard drive.   If I find a solution, I will definitely post it.

rickmktg · Answer

@AltNrg4U wrote:

ejn63,

Thank you!! You information has at least allowed me to get to my data again. I was able to take ownership of my folder via this method, and I am in the process of backing that information up to my internal hard drive right now.

If anyone has any ideas on being able to load the Inspiron 9300 drivers onto my old drive, that would be icing on the cake. I would dearly love to make that a bootable drive (the drivers are the only thing preventing this) WITHOUT reformatting or reloading all of my software.

I am thankful to at least access my old data. This is very helpful.

Not going to happen. You can't take the boot drive from a "older" laptop and make it boot the 9300. Not an option.

AltNrg4U · Answer

Thank you GreyMack.  I probably could have been clearer.  I was aware of the drivers page on Dell, but I did not know which ones to download and install to make the old drive work as a bootable drive.  I had hoped that their was a file on the computer that could have been used.   Thanks for the help though!

Storage, Drives & Media

Making old hard drive (from another computer) an external BOOTABLE hard drive

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