i have a compaq computer and a 6 year old ibm can i conect my 5gb western digtal harddrive wil the ibm read the files the same way???

i have a compaq computer and a 6 year old ibm can i conect my150gb western digtal harddrive will the ibm read the files the same way???

Listen to the guy below me

That really depends. There are a couple of limiting factors when it comes to hard drives. The first hardware (BIOS/motherboard-related) limit was at around 512Mb but that was years and years ago. Then DOS and Windows 95 and NT4 couldn't see partitions bigger than 2Gb. After that, there was another hardware limit at 8.4Gb in the mid- to late-1990s.

I would guess that your 1999/2000 IBM should be able to support hard drives bigger than 8.4Gb.

That only leaves the last limit. Earlier versions of Windows can't deal with partitions bigger than 36.7Gb. If you're running Windows 2000 or XP on the IBM, then you should have no problem there either.

Finally, if the 150Gb drive can be detected properly on the IBM PC, that still doesn't guarantee that any files created on that hard disk using the Compaq PC will be perfectly readable by the IBM. You may have a conflict between the types of file system or encryption. Assuming that you're running Windows 2000 or XP on both and you aren't using file encryption or restricted permissions, then it should be OK.

Hope that helps