Moving Harddrive

  • Thread starter Thread starter Alan
  • Start date Start date
A

Alan

I recently aquried a used computer, a 550mhz, that is
slightly newer than my current one, a 450mhz. The 450 is
running XP and the 550 is running 98. What I want to do
is to move my current harddrive over to the new computer
and keeping the other drive as a slave for a short time.
If I simply install it will XP be able to reconfigure the
other drive so that it dosen't conflict with drive
letters or do I need to change the drive letter first?
And will that keep me from running programs on the 550
drive?
 
There 's several issues here, some, like activation, aren't even technical.

Beware that moving a HD w/ existing OS's is a bit of a crap-shoot, it all
depends on how closely matched the systems are. If the processor type or
motherboard has changed (some have different features, like USB, Firewire,
SATA, ISA vs. PCI, etc.), all of these complicate the transistion, it will
not work without some assistance. You'll need to do a REPAIR install (just
boot the XP CD and choose the option) and it will "adjust" the configuration
accordingly. In most cases, it'll work, but it's not a 100% guarantee, but
worth trying.

The second issue is activation. You're likely to trigger activation again,
but whether this proves a real problem w/ MS, or a mere inconvenience (a
phone call?), is beyond my knowledge. I suspect as long as you're only
"moving" it, and not trying to use it on BOTH machines, it will simply be an
annoyance and require a 5 minute explanation to MS to fix. If you haven't
activated in the past 120 days, the issue is moot, all activation
requirements are waived after 120 days from the last activation! (that much
I know :)

Anyway, those are the first two hurdles, now comes the issue of the second
drive. I assume you don't intend to boot Win98 off the new system, you just
want access/usage of the old HD for data or similar purposes. If so, just
make sure the HD w/ XP is the primary on IDE #1 (so it remains C:), and the
old Win98 HD is the primary on IDE #2 (or slave to IDE #1, doesn't matter).
When XP boots, the Win98 partition (assuming there is only the two
partitions, XP and Win98) will becomes drive D: (or whatever's available
after your optical drives, if any). If you want to cleanup the drive D:,
that's pretty self explanatory.

HTH

Jim
 
Download Partition magic from Cnet,install and follow the
ddirections.You can run as many operating systems as you
wish.Hope this helps.Mike
 
Back
Top