Dual drive installation question

[cleobaby74]

Hi there,
I was wondering if anyone could help me with a problem of mine. You see, I just got a new PC, loaded with XP but all my important files are on my old system. Of course, my old system has decided it doesn't want to start up (most likely the motherboard) and since I don't won't to go through a big hassle, i've decided the easiest solution would be to just install my old drive as a slave on my new system. But, the old drive is loaded with W2K Pro Beta Ed. Will this cause a conflict or a problem? I would love to use it as a permanent backup drive, but would be content to just get it running long enough to copy my files. Any help would be appreciated on this. Thanks in advance, Tabitha

 

[Markfw]

Welcome to the forums ! You can mount the hard drive in the new computer, and make it a "slave" drive and the current one the "master" drive. Then when you power up, it will become the "D" drive, and your CD will be E (unless XP decides to reverse those). Anyway, you data files will becomes accessable, but you won't be able to "boot" from your old OS.

 

[Regs]

Well you computer only boots up one os. So which ever boot device selected in the bios will ultimately determine what OS you use. If you would want to switch OS's on boot you will need a dual OS boot utility like DualWins or AddAWin. Which I think could be found on download.com

 

[cleobaby74]

Thanks for the reply! I feel a little better about this then. I'm still nervous about losing the data though, so hopefully it will work out right. Forgive me if this sounds simple, but basically all I need to do is reset the jumpers and plug in the IDE cable, then boot it up, and I should be able to access the new drive, right?

 

[Regs]

Originally posted by: cleobaby74
Thanks for the reply! I feel a little better about this then. I'm still nervous about losing the data though, so hopefully it will work out right. Forgive me if this sounds simple, but basically all I need to do is reset the jumpers and plug in the IDE cable, then boot it up, and I should be able to access the new drive, right?

Correct. I remember having an unformatted HDD with Windows ME on it while I wan Windows 2000 pro on the other. Not exactly a clean way of running your computer though. There are some things you might have to change in Disk Managment to make sure nothing installs or gets cached into your old OS. If I were you I would just back up your data and reformat your older HDD.

 

[Iron Woode]

Originally posted by: cleobaby74
Hi there,
I was wondering if anyone could help me with a problem of mine. You see, I just got a new PC, loaded with XP but all my important files are on my old system. Of course, my old system has decided it doesn't want to start up (most likely the motherboard) and since I don't won't to go through a big hassle, i've decided the easiest solution would be to just install my old drive as a slave on my new system. But, the old drive is loaded with W2K Pro Beta Ed. Will this cause a conflict or a problem? I would love to use it as a permanent backup drive, but would be content to just get it running long enough to copy my files. Any help would be appreciated on this. Thanks in advance, Tabitha

The last time I did this, WinXP decided I needed to dual boot because it detected to other OS on the second HDD. All I did was turn it off under System Properties -> Advanced -> Start Up and Recovery.

 

[nitromullet]

Originally posted by: cleobaby74
Thanks for the reply! I feel a little better about this then. I'm still nervous about losing the data though, so hopefully it will work out right. Forgive me if this sounds simple, but basically all I need to do is reset the jumpers and plug in the IDE cable, then boot it up, and I should be able to access the new drive, right?

That should do it. I have run into a problem with user permissions doing this before. Basically, I couldn't access the files in the old My Documents folder without first changing the ownership of the these files. This can only be done with the administrator acct (or one with admin rights) on WinXP, but it isn't difficult.

simply:

- Go to Windows Explorer->Tools->Folder Options>View> and uncheck use simple file sharing at the very bottom.
- Right click the folder you do not have access to and go to Sharing and Security
- Select the Security Tab, click Advanced
- Then go to the Owner tab and click the name of the admin account you want to be the owner. Make sure you check the box maked Replace owner on subcontainers and Objects

Once you have ownership of the files, you will be able to copy them over to your new HD. I would recommend keeping the old drive in the new computer. Just format it after you get all you files off of it and keep it as a backup.