Can I use my laptop drive to boot an older PC

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Sangiovese

22 posts

Geek

#303605 21-Feb-2023 16:56

Hi, looking for some advice please....hope someone can help :)

Our Dell Inspiron laptop has had the screen break off...bit of damage!
If I try to start via my work Dell dock the login screen comes up but
then it just goes black. Same thing happens if I just use an external monitor
via HDMI.
I assume it's toast.
It's a few years old and we just had the hard drive replaced a month ago.
We are unable to get a new machine till 20th April (that's payday for our crop).

We have an older Dell i5 PC, am I able to either put the hard drive in that or
use the laptop drive in an enclosure to boot off (I have an enclosure that it fits in).
Can we make the drive bootable without losing everything on it?

I'm grateful for any help or advice you can give!

Cheers,
David

xpd

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#3040215 21-Feb-2023 17:42

Technically, yes, but would I ? No.

You can do a Windows repair on the i5 and hopefully it all works.

Id personally put the old drive into an enclosure, install Windows on the i5 drive and just copy your data from the old drive to the i5.

XPD / Gavin

LinkTree

Sangiovese

22 posts

Geek

#3040386 21-Feb-2023 20:45

Thanks for that advice,

I tried to use the windows drive repair tools on the PC and it seems the problem is....
inaccessible boot device.

The online help for that is a bit above me, is a fix easy or should I take it to someone?

Cheers,
David

xpd

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#3040451 22-Feb-2023 08:22

Best to get someone a bit more familiar with it to assist you in person, as you dont want to end up accidentally wiping the drive and losting all your data.

Where abouts are you located, there may be a Geekzoner in the area that could assist for the price of a beer or two :)

XPD / Gavin

LinkTree

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#3040502 22-Feb-2023 11:11

Inaccessible boot drive message is often caused by incompatible secure boot settings. Most likely the laptop has secure boot on & the desktop doesn't. Go into your desktop BIOS settings & see if it's UEFI capable, can you turn secure boot on? There's a variety of settings alongside secure boot, referred to in different ways by various manufacturers. If you can examine your laptop settings then replicate those in the desktop machine, you should get an accessible boot drive that brings Windows to your screen.

Rikkitic

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#3040540 22-Feb-2023 14:03

Your drive is almost certainly okay as far as any data is concerned. It might even be possible to boot from it again. What you don't want to do is make any (more) changes to it. Find a second drive (shouldn't be expensive) and clone the first one so you have a secure back-up. Then use the clone to experiment with. There is good free cloning software that can be downloaded. Macrium Reflect is one.

Plesse igmore amd axxept applogies in adbance fir anu typos

Sangiovese

22 posts

Geek

#3040544 22-Feb-2023 14:18

Thanks everyone for your replies!

I have taken it in to a local computer repair shop and they seem to have it all under control :)

Thanks Geekzone.

Cheers,
David