Vista Upgrading Dilemma

samzetec-s

samzetec-s

samzetec-s

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22 May 2007
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136
I want to upgrade my PC from XP to Vista, currently i only have one hard drive. My hard drive is nearly a year old and i originally had the idea to transfer the info i wanted off it, reformat it, then install vista.

However can i possible get another new HD, and put Vista on that and drag stuff off my old one onto it? Is there a way to "plug in" my old hard drive and take stuff off it whilst using vista OS on the other??
 
Absolutely. The easiest way is to simply disconnect your old HDD temporarily and install Vista on the new one, then reconnect the old disk when your finished (making sure the BIOS boot priority is set to boot the Vista one) and it should appear as another drive letter (E: probably) in Vista and you can move/copy stuff onto the new drive. You also then have a second HDD in the machine for backups etc.
 
rpstewart said:
Absolutely. The easiest way is to simply disconnect your old HDD temporarily and install Vista on the new one, then reconnect the old disk when your finished (making sure the BIOS boot priority is set to boot the Vista one) and it should appear as another drive letter (E: probably) in Vista and you can move/copy stuff onto the new drive. You also then have a second HDD in the machine for backups etc.
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Simple as that? There wont be any conflicts as one drive is XP though will there? Just connect/disconnect the sata lead from the board for XP drive as and when i feel like it?

EDIT: Does the 16MB cache really make that much difference in HDD's?
 
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samzetec-s said:
Simple as that? There wont be any conflicts as one drive is XP though will there? Just connect/disconnect the sata lead from the board for XP drive as and when i feel like it?

EDIT: Does the 16MB cache really make that much difference in HDD's?
Click to expand...
The content of the disk is pretty much irrelevant as long as the system is set to boot from the one with Vista on it. You could connect and disconnect the old drive as you like but you should do it with the machine powered off. If you only want it available occasionally then you'd be better off sticking it in an external USB or eSATA caddy.

There will be a slight difference in performance between otherwise identical drives with 8Mb and 16Mb caches but it's no where near as big a difference as between 2Mb & 8Mb.
 
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