How do I add an old Hard drive to a new computer?

[mabus]

I got a new Sony VAIO a while back. It has two Western Digital hard drives in it, a C and D disk. One is 16 Gigs, the other one is 95 Gigs. But, there is only one physical hard drive in the computer.

My old computer had two hard drives in it, both Western Digital. One was a small hard drive that contained the operating system. The other was a 30 Gig drive that I only used for storage.

I can install the hard drive that has the operating system in it into my new computer, and the computer recognizes it. The big hard drive, the one will all my stuff on it, well that's not happening. When I set it to slave, and set my computers to master, nothing happens. The computer doesn't recognize it, it's just a hunk of metal sitting in my computer.
(It does work, because if my old crappy computer is on, it works normally.) I've tried every jumper setting imaginable, I think, using the cable select jumpers, but nothing happens, or the computer goes crazy when the jumpers are set wrong.

Anyone had this problem before, or know how to fix it so my new computer can access my old hard drive?

 

[TKpervert]

I tried this once with a new Gateway years ago with mixed results. Ended up getting so pissed I gave the thing to a friend's kid to play games on. He loved it! I then bought a Sony VAIO and been with em ever since.
Here's a few questions, but don't depend on finding any answers here:

have you tried switching the drives on the ribbon cable (first/last,last/first). ?

have you looked into the bios ? (F8 on boot up).

Here's a link with some info.
The guy at the bottom of the page, who says it didn't work for him, had the same problem I had with the Gateway: couldn't find the damn operating system.
I'll see if I can find more articles. This really shouldn't be that difficult.

http://www.pcmech.com/show/harddrive/43/

 

[mabus]

It didn't work. Windows wouldn't load up when I tried the CD rom cable. I have a CD Rom drive and a DVD drive hooked up to one cable, since the computer came with both drives. How do I route the CD Rom cable to the hard drive? The cable fit, and I never thought about that before, but alas, what I tried didn't work.

How can I do that?

 

[TKpervert]

Hmmm, I've never peeked inside my Sony, but in all the machines I'd had before, the hard drive had its own ribbon cable with connectors for two hard drives.

 

[mabus]

Still doesn't work. See, there's one physical harddrive in the computer, and a space for a second drive. No matter how I hook it up to the main harddrive ribbon, and set the jumpers, it either screws up the computer, or does absolutely nothing.

 

[TKpervert]

Same damn problem I had with the Gateway.

There are hardware/software packages you can buy that will make a secondary computer look like it's 'inside' the primary computer.
You can actually drag and drop files from the secondary computer into the primary computer. These packages ain't cheap.
This would be ok for copying data, but wouldn't work for reproducing packages like TurboTax, PhotoShop or Word. There are requisite tweaks that wouldn't come across, like registry modifications, etc.
You need the install CD for those.