PC just died after 6 years - Thinking of buying Mac Mini

[nylonsteel]

My PC of 6 years just died - motherboard is fried - verified by a pc repair shop
I'm thinking of buying a Mac Mini - my first mac ever
The old hard drive running Win XP is still good
How do I run a Mac Mini and access my Win XP Hard drive?
Is it as simple as buying Parallels software and hook up my old xp drive from an enclosure and connect it to a mac mini with a usb cable?
Any advice would be appreciated
My first post ever on MacRumors

 

[ri0ku]

My PC of 6 years just died - motherboard is fried - verified by a pc repair shop
I'm thinking of buying a Mac Mini - my first mac ever
The old hard drive running Win XP is still good
How do I run a Mac Mini and access my Win XP Hard drive?
Is it as simple as buying Parallels software and hook up my old xp drive from an enclosure and connect it to a mac mini with a usb cable?
Any advice would be appreciated
My first post ever on MacRumors

Sorry to hear that, Ok if you place your XP HDD into an enclosure and plug it in via USB to the mac mini you should be able to access the files straight away, you dont need parallels to do this.

(However if you want to move your XP files into a windows install I recommend installing windows via bootcamp on the mac mini and then transfering the files accross while you boot in windows)

Hope that helps

 

[Fishrrman]

The PC drive -- is it "old" ATA/IDE, or is it SATA?

If it's ATA/IDE, you could buy an enclosure to put it in, or, you could use something like this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...e=rosewill_ide_adapter-_-12-119-152-_-Product
(This will also work with SATA drives as well)

If the drive is SATA, you could use a "dock" like this:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias=aps&field-keywords=usb+sata+dock&x=0&y=0

If the "dock approach" will work for you, check dealmac.com to see if there are any on sale. I've seen them there in the $15 range.

Either approach could take care of the "hardware connection issues".

Once this is accomplished, you should be able to "mount" the drive on the Mac desktop.

From that point, you could copy files from it "to the Mac side" on the Mini's drive.

I don't do Windows on the Mac, so it's up to others to help with the software side of things...