New Computer, Want To Use Old Harddrive

[damian]

ok so a friend of mine is getting a new computer but he want his old hard drive in the new computer since it has all his pictures movies, games ect. but the old HDD has windows XP in it, and the new computer hes getting is a pre-built with a fresh OS and everything. How would he go about having two HDD's with two operating systems and keeping his data.

 

He wants me to put the two HDD's but im not to sure like I know how to put the two HDD's in the case and have one as primary and the other as slave but i dont know the whole deal with the operating systems...any ideas?

[shatteredsteel]

MAKE SURE YOU DON'T HAVE THE OLD DRIVE HOOKED UP WHEN YOU RELOAD!

It causes alot of headaches...been there done that.

 

After reload...

 

Hook the main (New) Drive up as master, the old one as slave.

 

Set the BIOS to boot from the new drive.

 

copy the files over from the old drive

 

then you can wipe the old drive and make it into a storage drive if you'd like.

[damian]

what do you mean by reload?

and when im copying files how will that work? is it like a drag and drop thing, from say drive F:\ to drive C:\

sorry for the questions but this will be my first time doing this and i dont want to mess up my friends brand new computer

Edited May 23, 2008 by damian

[Syngensmyth]

His new computer must be using IDE (odd for a new system)? If it is SATA and the old drive is IDE I would think the BIOS is going to keep looking for the SATA to boot. This would not be a master/slave setup. Depending on the BIOS some can be set to more specifically point to certain drives, some can't.

 

Even if the computer tries to boot from the old XP OS, I don't know what the harm would be. It will hate it of course and not work but no harm.

 

Then it's drag and drop or what ever method of copying you prefer.

[Branjo]

If its IDE then use the CS (cable select) jumper and just plug it in and boot, go into BIOS and make sure you are booting from the right disk, save it, and your done.

[krazypoloc]

As Syng and Branjo have stated all you have to do is set both drives to cable select (if they are IDE) and go into your BIOS on startup. Also make a note of the brand and model number of the drives.

 

 

You will see an option for "Boot Order", or boot sequence, or something to this effect. Choose the new drive (this is why you want to make a note of the drives before you power the system on because it should say what the manufacturer is and the model in BIOS)

 

Then boot your OS and cut and paste your files from old drive to new.

 

AS a side note I would recommend you "cut" the files rather than "copy". Copying takes a significantly longer amount of time and there is no real reason to leave the old files on the drive as you should format it as soon as you have everything transferred over.

 

Windows command for cut is ctrl+x or you can also right click and drag and it will give you more options than just copying the files over.

[Sabmac]

I simply hooked up my old drive, set the new drive for boot in the BIOS, and was away. Amateur but got the job done. Had a lot of issues with setting ownership to the fies in the old My Documents folder, but that was fixed with a google search and a safe executable. I can't boot XP properly from the old drive though, computer says no.

[Guest KrankyOldLady]

Right...let the weirdo say something.

I am actually booting either on xp or vista with a dual boot thingy from xp iirc.

Who not go dual boot for now and jank the files over?

[itsernst]

He can use xcopy when he has booted to the new drive in windows to copy over the folders he wishes.