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Hard Drive and WinXP question

K

Krait

Junior Member
I'm building a new system and also using some components from my old set-up,but i'd like to know how to transfer some files from my old HDD (ATA33) which has Win98 as the OS to my new drive (ATA100) on which i will be using WinXP.
Is there going to be a problem with having 2 HDDs with different operating systems connected to the same computer.....i will be just using the new drive after i've transferred all the files i need....and what do i need to do beforehand with my old drive so there are no conflicts with drive letter assignments (or is this not going to be a problem)
The New components are going to be Asus P4s333/P4 1800/WD 1000jb/Geforce4 Ti440/1gb memory and WinXp.
Any help will be greatly appreciated.
 
If you've got a machine with Win98 on it, installing WinXP as a 2nd operating system on a 2nd disk is a doddle.
Win98 needs to be on an active partition on disk1 (which it already will be), whereas winxp will happily install to anywhere (it recognises disk location by referring to its actual IDE channel location, rather than a lettered drive like win98).
The winxp installation will also recognise that you have another operating system, and ask you if you want to upgrade it or do a New install. Choose New to allow you to put it on the 2nd hard disk.
Winxp will then put files on the boot HD (where win98 is) and effectively give you a menu, so that on boot-up, you'll choose which OS you want to boot into.
From there - they each boot as if the other didn't exist.

If both disks are FAT32, then both operating systems will see all drives and files, but obviously you'll only be able to use games/applications that have been installed whilst running the respective OS.
 
Thanks for your reply,what i want to do though is have WinXp as the OS and only use my new drive.....i want to transfer files and an mmorpg folder to the new drive and then remove the old drive completely.....will there be any problems with this or will i still have to use the old drive to use games/applications that were installed under Win98.
Thanks in advance again 🙂
 
You could always just boot up with your ATA100 drive attached (making sure you set your BIOS to boot to CD), boot to the WinXP CD, format the drive if necessary... then do a bare bones installation.
Then reattach the older HD, making sure you now set the BIOS to boot from your ATA100 device. This should boot you into WinXP, with the other drive readily available to grab files off.

Games installed under your win98 installation will need your win98 running to work, as the installation makes changes to the system registry, which is obviously going to be a different registry under WinXP. Ie. You'll need to reinstall any games/apps under WinXP to use them under WinXP.

Hope I haven't patronised you there 🙂, but also hope i explained enough to understand!!
 
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