Do standard desktop PCs have two slots or openings for hard drives within their cavity?
November 9th, 2008 | 
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Hi asked:
Lets say I had a hard drive, which I boot from already installed in a my Dell desktop, and I had another hard drive installed in my, currently non-working, Gateway desktop. Could I take the hard drive out of my Gateway desktop and put it in the Dell desktop in order to view the data on without removing the Dell desktops hard drive? Do desktops have a two or more openings to put hard drives in side their body when you open the casing? Please elaborate.
Lets say I had a hard drive, which I boot from already installed in a my Dell desktop, and I had another hard drive installed in my, currently non-working, Gateway desktop. Could I take the hard drive out of my Gateway desktop and put it in the Dell desktop in order to view the data on without removing the Dell desktops hard drive? Do desktops have a two or more openings to put hard drives in side their body when you open the casing? Please elaborate.
Thank you for ALL of your answers.
Sincerely, Mike — A modern-day computer user.
Melinda
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It depends on the case that Dell used. There should be info on it in the manual that came with your computer with the amount of connectors and bays in your case.
yes you can do this, in fact i have 3 hard drives in my dell desktop, although you will have to set the jumpers on the 2nd hard drive to slave. just open up the computer and find a extra data cable that isnt being used there WILL be one.
the easiest way to do that is to remove the hard drive from the non working gateway computer and buy an external usb case to put it in. Then to use it on your dell computer you can plug it into your USB port on the dell desktop. That way you can access the data on the drive from the gateway computer. External cases are cheap, you can buy one for as little as $10 or less.
good luck