Old Hard Drive in a new build (as a slave)

[Replenish]

Hi Guys,

Sorry if this is an obvious question I've read the FAQ and had a search on the web but I cant seem to find a clear cut answer....

Anyway, Im about to get my new build PC which will have two new Hard Drives an SSD and a 1TB Sata II drive. (Windows 7 installed on the SSD).

Now in my existing PC I have one HD (a 74gb Raptor) with windows XP installed on it that I would like to install in my new machine so that I can get access to all my old docs and programmes etc.

Is this even possible? would I need to re-format the existing raptor? or is the best idea just to copy all my existing music and photos etc to a CD and install them on the new drive?

Sorry if its a dumb question

 

[True_Scotsman]

Yeah should be possible, i have done it with some drives in the past.

One thing though, you may have to assign a drive letter to the XP drive (through disk management) for it to be seen in Win7.

 

[Replenish]

Thanks Scotsman,

Assign a letter other than C before I uninstall it?

What happens to the XP installed on the drive and the existing programs? I take it I can 'clean' it up through win 7?

 

[CaptainCrash]

Assign a letter other than C before I uninstall it?

You don't need to do that (XP won't let you anyway), just plug it into a SATA port on the new PC and it should automatically be assigned the next available drive letter.

One snag is that you may run into permission/ownership issues when you try to access files in your old profile - it should be easily resolved, but if your user data will fit onto a couple of DVDs or an external USB drive, it might be simplest to do it that way. You could then install the Raptor in the new PC and just format it to give you extra storage, backup or whatever (if the extra 74GB are worth the additional noise...)