[bigblair]

my mates computer wont boot up any more, so i was going to copy his hard drive over to mine, he has his music collection on it, but i dont know how to do this, any help would be great.

[mcbee]

You can install the drive as a slave drive in your computer and transfer files onto your hard drive provided his drive is not damaged.

[bigblair]

okay cheers, is it simple to do, is it as simple as connecting the wires together then turning on?

[mcbee]

Almost. You need to connect a data cable which will be either IDE (wide flat cable usu grey) or SATA which is smaller (grey or orange), and a power cable which will either have a Molex connector (4 pin) or SATA which is usu black.In the case of the IDE cable there will be a connector in the centre of it (closer to the hard drive end) which is for the slave drive. The age of the computer will help to identify which type you are more likely to have.

[whiskey]

The best software I've found is Copy Commander. It's easy to use and not expensive. Just connect the drive you want to copy to as a slave, boot up with Copy Commander Disc and transfer everything. First you will install the Copy Commander software in windows and then make a bootup disc. It's worked great for us in our repair shop, and it's much easier to use than Ghost.