Hello everyone, it's my first time using this, I have had this problem for quite along time now, so I hope some can help me. I have two computers and one with several extrainternal hard drives with no data on there. I want to remove them and install them onto another computer. How do I do it safely? Last time I tried to just remove and install, and I almost crashed my computer. Someone please help me removing and installing. I have trouble figuring out which is the master and slave drives.

First advice is to backup anything you cannot replace! Once that is done you can play more :D

Hard drives and CD drives (IDE) can have three modes generally - Master, Slave and Cable Select. You set the mode using jumpers on the back of the drive - next to where the cable plugs in usually. Each drive is different - the only way to find out how to set yours is to look at the drive, there will usually be a diagram showing which pins to short (connect) with the jumpers.

Standard pc's usually have IDE channels (primary and secondary) each channel uses one cable. Each channel can have up to 2 devices (master and slave) on the cable (thats why the cables have 3 connectors on - 1 for motherboard and 2 for drives).

The hard drive your system boots from is usually the master drive on the primary channel. I suggest that this has lots of info on and you leave this one connected to your current system. If all the others are empty you can just turn off the machine and unplug them. When you connect them into the new machine just make sure on each cable there is a master and a slave. You cannot have two masters or two slaves but either will work on its own.

Generally speaking it is a good idea to have the fastest drive as master and older drives as slave.

If you want to use cable select - set both drives to this mode and the computer should figure it out (usually the furthest from the motherboard is master).

Have fun!