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New Hard Drive Installation

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by gbalonek

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I am installing a new hard drive in my PC. The old hard drive is partitioned, with "C:" being the Primary and "D" being Secondary. If I setup the old hard drive as the "Slave" can I just transfer the files from the old hard drive to the new hard drive?

6 replies

by absolutely

Yes, after you install Windows to your new hard drive, or clone the operating system from your old C:\ drive to your new hard drive using Norton Ghost.

by hal 9000

It depends on if the new drive is a SATA and the old drive was an IDE. If that is the case then you'll have to reinstall Windows and you other software. As cloning will not place the SATA Drivers in the correct place to allow the OS to load.

If both are SATA or IDE then you can do a straight clone and work from there it should be an easy job to work from there.

Col

by gbalonek

The new hard drive will be SATA. The old hard drive will be IDE. I am not looking to Clone the old hard drive, just to be able to copy the files over manually. Since the new hard drive will be "C:", won't that cause a conflict with the old hard drive which already has a "C:" drive?

by mailtemp

when you set up the hd windows will automatically assing it a letter.and since c is taken then it will move on to the next one.

by rafal

Drive assignments are tied to the operating system. Drive C: for the previous OS may be interpreted as another drive letter for this OS. This is dependent on which controller which drive is on. Usually if you have IDE and SATA on you motherboard, IDE will be primary. So if drive nr.1 is IDE and has partitions C: and D: most likely they will remain with the drive letters. What you can and should do when installing the now OS is disconnect the old drive, make sure the SATA drive is set for first boot, install the OS. Afterwards reconnect the IDE drive. This way your boot-record will be located on your new drive along with the system, otherwise you will have your boot-record on the old drive C: and your system on drive E:. This is something I would not want to have, unless you want to have dual OS but thats another story.

But going back to the question yes you will have access to your old files either way.

by squirrel_l

i was reading about your posting on New Hard Drive Installation,and your reply was exactly what ive needed.Old HD is IDE,new one is SATA both maxtor.Now i have one question.After i unplug old hard drive,install windows xp on new one,and plug back in old one as a slave,with XP still on it,can i reformat it and use the old one as a storage?Will the presence of the XP on old HD have any influence on new ?

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