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Installing a XP formatted drive into Vista without erasing?

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by bax2x

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I have a 32-bit edition of Vista that came with a new pc. I have an old HD from a different XP pc that I want to add a second HD. Can I do this somehow without erasing all the data on it? Is dual-booting my only option? If specs are needed I can pull it out of its slot it's just that it was a real pain in the kisser to get it in there.

11 replies

by khongphutu

Hi,

You're actually talking about 2 separate issues here, namely (1) able to use both drives on the PC, and (2) able to boot from either drive (without destroying data on the 2nd older drive in both cases).

First, Vista and XP both likely be formatted to NTFS. But what most people don't know is that there are several NTFS formats. Vista and XP uses NTFS 3.1. Therefore data from one drive (current) is readable/writable by the other (2nd older) drive. This is good news since you don't have to do anything to the existing File System (FS) format.

Next, you have to find out what type of drive Controller your PC has (the one the 1st hard drive is connected to). Then you need to find out what drive interface of both the 1st drive and the 2nd drive.

If the drives has different interface, such as the case where the 1st one is SATA and the 2nd one is EIDE/ATA or PATA, then you can't use the 2nd drive unless your motherboard also supports EIDE/ATA or if you can add a EIDE/ATA drive controller to your PC.

If both drives has the same ATA interface, then all you have to do is connect the 2nd drive to the remaining connector on the controller cable. If your PC supports IDE/ATA, then there should be 2 side-by-side IDE connectors that connect the motherboard to the existing drives and the CD-ROM /CDRW/ DVD-ROM/ DVD+R /DVD-R, or DVD-RW drive. If your current drive is connected to the a EIDE/ATA cable, there should (not always) be another unused connector in the middle. All you have to do is use a jumper to set your 2nd drive as a slave drive (check label on the drive or get more info on the drive manufacturer website), mount this drive, then connect it to the EIDE and power cable to it. Do not connect your 2nd hard drive to the EIDE/ATA cable as a slave and the removable media drive as a master.

If both drives are SATA, then you may be able to find existing SATA cable in your PC or buy another SATA cable to connect your drive.

It's difficult to provide further comments without knowing your PC's hardware configuration.

Unless the hardware connectivity issue is resolved, there is no use to talk about dual-booting.

Good luck.

by nimmo

Just put the drive in the machine. If you want to keep Vista as your primary OS and XP and the second option, you will need to edit the boot sector to allow you to dual boot the system.

There is no boot.ini in Vista it has been replaced with Boot Configuration Data (BCDedit)

http://technet2.microsoft.com/WindowsVista/en/library/08d64d13-4f45-4a05-bd86-c99211a93dd91033.mspx?mfr=true

You will need to boot into vista and run from the command line BCDedit. Here is a quick tutorial I think will help you out.

http://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/2014/vista_using_bcdedit_boot_up_options_dual_boot_xp_prof

by seanferd

or do you want to be able to boot both XP and Vista? For just the drive space, you're good to go, but XP will be using a lot of space for nothing. You can delete anything you don't want after you get the drive installed. Write down all those specs (everything) just in case BIOS does not recognize the drive properly (not a problem in my experience) Make sure the drive jumper is set as Slave (it is Master now, as it was the boot drive in the old system).

If you actually want to dual-boot, XP will have to be re-installed for the new system. The OS sets itself up for the hardware environment.

Dual booting Windows versions can be a bit involved, depending on your comfort level with that kind of thing.

See this if dual-boot is your interest:
http://forums.microsoft.com/TechNet/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=2331485&SiteID=17

Read the entire thread. Then just search dual boot on microsoft.com, and read through results involving Vista and XP. It is generally best, in this case, to install XP first, then re-install Vista, but get all the facts first. Be as well-informed as you can. If you specifically want to dual-boot, post back and say so, I am sure other folks here have set that up and understand it well.

There are other boot loaders that might work for this (like GRUB) but I am in no position to advise on this for Vista.

Anyway, I hope that answers your question or at least gets you started.

by bax2x

Ok, well I got the old drive installed. Since the Vista drive is SATA and this old drive is ATA, I found an old ribbon cable and luckily there was an open slot on the motherboard for it to connect into. I set everything up and turned on the computer. The load windows in safe mode screen comes up. Apparently, the computer is having trouble deciding which drive to boot from. The original Vista drive is listed as the 3rd master and the CD/DVD drive is the 2nd master. The old drive is coming up as 1st slave and is listed before the 3rd master in the HDD list. Every time I restart my computer now I have to hit esc and go to the boot menu so that the computer boots off of the 3rd master. What can I do to make this automatic again?

by nimmo

You need to go into the BIOS to change the boot settings. To access the BIOS you need to hit either F1, F2, F12, or del at POST (its varies from machine to machine).

Once your in the BIOS there will be a setting under boot order change that to what you want (you may have to browse through a few menus to find the where the setting is).

by bax2x

Just realized I forgot to change the jumper setting to master on the old drive. Now I see why this is a problem. What can I do to change the BIOS or whatever I need to change so that it reads the original Vista drive as the boot drive and this old drive as a secondary drive?

by seanferd

Firstly, how you access BIOS depends on who made your computer. It involves depressing a key when your system is booting (before Windows starts loading).

Watch the screen as the system boots. If there is information displayed (not just a splash screen image), look for text (frequently at the bottom of the screen) that says someting like "Press __ key to enter BIOS." On Dell computers, it is the Delete (Del) key. F1 is another common key.

You can try these keys, it won't hurt. If these don't work, and the info isn't available at boot time, look in the manual. Or, if there is a help file from your computer manufacturer in the Start Menu, look in there. You can also check on the manufacturer's website. Or just tell us what the make and model of your computer is, I'll find out for you.

I don't know what BIOS you have (this is displayed on Startup, if text is present) so I don't know the exact procedure to change the boot order of your drives.

If you get into BIOS setup, you can look around. Eventually you will find something about setting the order of boot devices. If you take notes of the Devices page (the one that lists your drives) you will know which drive is the one you want to set as the first boot drive. In other words, figure out what designation your Vista drive has (S0, S1, HD0, HD1, etc.). Then set that as the first boot device for hard drives. You can still leave your CD Drive and Floppy drive(if present) as booting before the hard drive. If there isn't a boot disk in those drives, they are skipped.

Note: When you exit BIOS, only Save Changes or say Yes to Saving Changes if you changed the settings you wanted to save. You can always go back and make changes again, but why deal with the hassle if you don't need to, especially if you don't know what else you might have changed. (BIOS always asks this on exit, just say No, unless you made only the changes you want).

Again, feel free to post back with further questions, or if you need clarification.

Any detailed questions about physically connecting SATA drives, I will have to refer to someone else. (Sorry.)

Good luck. :)

by khongphutu

Your question "What can I do to change the BIOS or whatever I need to change so that it reads the original Vista drive as the boot drive and this old drive as a secondary drive? " actually mixing two separate concepts.

1. If you want to boot (automatically; by default) this is called controlling the booting order.

2. Primary and secondary are concept that's applicable to jumper setting on the drives and drive placement on the IDE/EIDE controller in each of the two supported channels only.

Do not mix the two concepts together!

If the boot drives are of the same interface (all IDE/EIDE, or all ATA) then boot order is controlled by the boot loader order. For IDE/EIDE interface, this order is based on the primary/master position, followed by the options set in the boot.ini.

If the boot drives are from the different interface (IDE/EIDE and ATA) then the boot order is BIOS-implementation dependent, which varies from vendor to vendor.

by bax2x

I had originally tried to install the old drive as the slave to the DVD/CD drive and it asked me to reformat to use. I am glad that putting in a second ribbon and making it the master of that cable allowed me to save the data on it without reformatting. Thank you for all of your help.

by seanferd

Slave the optical drive to the hard drive. It may be a pain to cable it that way, but you want the HDD as master, and the optical drive as slave.

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