[Q] Moving NTFS drive to a new pc

[ExplodingBoy]

I have an 80G drive formatted to NTFS on an XP box. Can I put the drive on a different XP box and still be able to access the files? What things do I have to watch out for?

 

[GAZZA]

biggest problem would be your new hardware you have in the new pc , unless your putting the drive in a exact duplicate of your existing hardware then you could hose the whole OS (that is if your hard drive contains an OS).

XP is normally pretty good at doing this but it is still a gamble , if you do try this I suggest that you backup your drive if possible .

If the drive is just a normal extended partition then you should have no problems providing you set the drive up correctly (master/slave device)

 

[ExplodingBoy]

The drive contains only data; so having an OS/apps on it is not an issue. What I am worried about, specifically is that when I formatted it XP asked me something like do I want to make it a basic volume or an advanced volume with features like disk spanning, etc. I chose Advanced. Actually "advanced" wasn't the name for it, but I can't recall what the term was.

Does the volume's status as "Advanced" or whatever mean I can move it to a new PC?

 

[GAZZA]

OK what MS is trying to get you to do is to get you to format the drive the way they want you to do it rather than how you want to do it , it is called Dynamic drive .

Personally I always cancel the wizard and partition/formatted the drive from the "computer management" interface .

But seeing as you have already formatted the drive this way I wouldn't think there would be an issue as it is the same OS your using .

 

[ExplodingBoy]

Dynamic. Yeah that's it. Thanks.

So the fact that the drive is formatted as Dynamic doesn't prevent it from being usable in another XP box, right?

 

[GAZZA]

In theory no ..... just make sure you back your data up in case of problems !

 

[Vic]

You're talking about taking an NTFS formatted drive and physically moving it from one XP system to another? Of course you can do that without issues. Just make sure you setup the drives right, jumpers, cables, etc. It should boot in the new system like normal, except XP may "install new devices" and want to reboot right away (or it may not). It will assign the drive the first available drive letter, which you can change later in the MMC.

 

[ExplodingBoy]

Thanks!