Hard drives and motherboards are essential components for building or upgrading a computer system.
Hard drives and motherboards are essential components for building or upgrading a computer system.
I watched many of Linus's tutorials and ended up visiting his site for help. In some of his recent builds, especially with a high-end Xeon processor and 16 GB RAM, he seems to boot into an existing operating system after a cut in the video. I tried assembling a machine using a pre-installed hard drive, but it wouldn't start. After some research, it appears you can't achieve this without formatting the drive—unless you clone it onto another drive first and then reinstall the OS. It seems the motherboard is linked to the drive in a way that prevents booting from scratch. If anyone knows a method to install an OS onto an existing hard drive without formatting or cloning, I'd appreciate any advice. Thanks!
The video cut shows him setting up the operating system without being visible. HDDs are separate from the motherboard, but placing the OS on a board using AHCI for SATA mode wouldn't work if you switch to IDE SATA mode. It's recommended to perform a clean install on new systems because the existing drives will still have outdated drivers and unnecessary features.
The hard drive received an OS installation from them before, possibly through another system, or it was placed between cut sessions. If this is what you meant by having OS on a different motherboard without copying the OS, then using the hard drive as the main boot drive allows you to install the OS there.
You should clone the existing drive, install a fresh operating system, and then try booting from the cloned drive. For tools, consider programs like Clonezilla or Macrium Reflect. If the original board fails, simply formatting it will erase all data without needing professional recovery services. This approach helps you access lost information from a working machine.
Computer not functioning properly. Could you clarify what you mean?
Well all the components are fine, a capacitor within the psu over heated and is trash, living out of the us, I can't find a replacement for the psu anywhere (it isn't a standard psu, its very thin, the ones found in the HP Slimline) and have ordered one to be shipped, but until then I need access to my data.
So you're really stuck, huh? You'll need a regular power source to get things going, or you might have to ask someone else for help and see what they suggest.