Re: [LUG] Changing the DVD drive

On 23 April 2013 14:01, Neil Winchurst <barnaby@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On 23/04/13 13:28, bad apple wrote:

Hi Neil,

I'm going to guess that you have one SATA interface and one PATA/IDE
interface in play here: your PC is older so it probably has the older
(and now relatively obsolete) IDE interface, whereas your replacement
drive probably has a newer SATA type interface. It could of course be
the other way around though. Have a look at the pics on these two wiki
pages so you know which is which:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_ata

The two won't play together nicely I'm afraid, although it's entirely
possible your PC actually has both types of connectors on it's
motherboard. If you're not sure, let us know your motherboards
make/model and we can google it to check.

I've got stacks of both IDE and SATA DVDs lying around, I pulled several
out of a dead machine just yesterday - getting them to you might be a
problem though as I'm too lazy to travel :]

Do you know if your old PC supports booting from a USB thumb drive? It's
really a lot easier than arsing about with DVDs anyway.

Cheers

I have checked and my old computer dates from April 2006. I can't believe it is 7 years old. So I guess you are right, it has the older style fittings for the DVD drive. I have never tried booting from a USB thumb drive, ever, so I don't know if it will work on this one, but I have my doubts. I will have to learn how to do that and then test it.

I don't know how far away you live.

The plan for the old computer was to get it up and running and then to see if it would make a home server. I like to learn new skills. I also have an old laptop, though not so old as the desktop, so perhaps it would make more sense to try that instead.

Thanks

Neil

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