Installing WinXP on new hard drive

WinME has gone “haywire” on my PC. Since I have not done a great job of backing up my files, I have purchased another hard drive which I was planning to install as a slave and copy the files that I wanted to keep to it, then reformatting my original drive. However, I began to wonder why not install WinXP on my new drive and make my original drive my slave drive and rename my Windows folder, etc in order to keep my original programs, drivers, etc. in case something went wrong in the process. Is this a good idea or bad idea? Comments will be appreciated.

Thanks.