How to add and check the old harddrive, if it works in my pc

[jraju]

Hi,
i have a old hard drive and could not check if it is working now. Can i remove the sata cable and power cable of cd drive and connect it test it as secondary storage device. Will it work? I am asking this because, if i connect by error, the entire system would get damaged. Does the two power connections  carry equal power to test? I am having a hard drive at present and i want to check by connecting it as a storage drive.
My another concern is , if it also tries to boot, how to know, which drive is booting? The question on the face value would be like a dummy query. But i do not want to risk to try without knowing.experts please

[Allan]

You can safely connect it as a second drive and the system will continue to boot from the primary drive.

[jraju]

Hi, Thanks for the reply allan.
              My concern was the power supply part. Because some device needs less and some more. I have already bricked a hdd fresh from store with incorrect power and could not even get the replacement.
So, do you say the cd drive power cable and hdd power cable are one and the same to connect. That is the concern. On receiving reply, i will check it as secondary drive in my pc.

[Mark.]

I often use the CD cables to temporarily access other devices like old drives.all HDD's, SSD's and CD/DVD units power and SATA/IDE cables are interchangeable.
in your first post you mention "does the two power connections carry equal power..." - there should only be one cable for power and one cable for data.
perhaps attaching a screenshot will eliminate any confusion.

[Geek-9pm]

I often use the CD cables to temporarily access other devices like old drives.all HDD's, SSD's and CD/DVD units power and SATA/IDE cables are interchangeable.
in your first post you mention "does the two power connections carry equal power..." - there should only be one cable for power and one cable for data.
perhaps attaching a screenshot will eliminate any confusion.

This might be your problem.
And are your really using Windows 98 SE ? You must not mix utilities from  older versions of MS-DOS with Windows 98SE. I think you have. 
 
But if you have to use Windows 98SEm You need to tell us  exactly what-your are doing. MS-DOS 7.1 is not very well documented. What is it? Did you mix it with Windows 98SE? Are you using bootleg software

PC DOS 7.1 added support for Logical Block Addressing (LBA) and FAT32 partitions.[nb 1] Various builds from 1999 up to 2003 were not released in retail, but used in products such as the IBM ServerGuide Scripting Toolkit.[18

An alternative is to use another PC running Windows 2000 or higher to program network storage for your library of DOS games.

[patio]

Ignore the above...thats not the issue Geek...

[Allan]

Hi, Thanks for the reply allan.
              My concern was the power supply part. Because some device needs less and some more. I have already bricked a hdd fresh from store with incorrect power and could not even get the replacement.
So, do you say the cd drive power cable and hdd power cable are one and the same to connect. That is the concern. On receiving reply, i will check it as secondary drive in my pc.

I responded to your question in my first post. YES - you can safely connect the drive.

[DaveLembke]

One thing to mention. Not probably going to happen... but as far as safely connecting a drive from one computer to another, there is the risk of certain malware/virus transmission if the OS that your running is susceptible to a virus from the old computer and a up to date real time antivirus isn't running. If you delete the partitions and create new and format the drive vs accessing old data on it your odds of infecting your system are very small. If you start clicking on running stuff from the old computers data on the new computer then there comes the risk of infection by cross contamination of 2 computers.

When I am given computers or get a used computer or hard drive(s), I wipe them clean in a Linux environment before bringing them over to my healthy Windows based systems. While running Linux I am immune to any Windows based malware and virus's that might be on that drive, and I can run utilities to check out the drive health and perform benchmarks on performance etc. This way I don't cross contaminate any of my healthy computers. Additionally I don't want to know what data anyone else had on their systems hard drives so I ditch that data first thing to make them clean.

Some say not to use used drives, but it all comes down to risk of data loss. A hard drive new or old could fail at any time. Good data backup practices make for lesser odds of data loss. One suggestion I have if you plan on using the older drive in your system is to create 2 copies of your most important data so that both hard drives contain the most critical data as for 2 drives failing at the same time is not very likely unless computer is struck by lightning etc. In addition to this have your data backed up to external media such as cloud storage or a external drive for the most critical of data.

I have a stack of hard drives and use them until they act up. My most important data is replicated across multiple drives and not just a single copy of it on an old hard drive.

[Geek-9pm]

Ignore my post #4. My bad, no excuse. 

Here is the direct, effective and simple answer.
To test and verify a old Hard Drive yourself can take you an hour. Maybe two..
If the minimum wage is $15 per hour, it cost you $15 to prove good drive is good. Bt if it is not good, you just wasted $15. Or maybe more .

Instead, buy a vendor certified drive from eBay for $15 that will have as much capacity and value as any old drive up to 500 GB. No need to test it, just start using it, If you get an error message, return it to the vendor and get a refund or replacement.The eBay policy requires him too just that if the device fails iwithin 10 days. (Read the listing carefully, there really are such offers.)

As for the old drive, sell it of eBay 'as is' for $10. There are people who will buy it without an offer of a refund or replacement.  So you  will have solved your task with no hardware of software investment except the $5 eBay investment and small faction of your time 

This is not a joke. Right now vendors are trying to get rid of overstock of new and re-certified hard drives that are old technology items. 

Also check Amazon for older drive types and see they want $60 and up. But on eBay there are desperate vendors that will see good hard drives under $20 with a refund policy in your favor. I just got a 320 GB drive for about $10.