Swapping HDD's, interesting question

[i_am_mowerman]

Hi, this may be a bit silly but...
I am thinking about doing a fresh XP Pro install on a HDD I have lying about for spare. My current HDD I'm using has important(ish) stuff on it, and I'm asking that if I stick in the spare HDD and stick XP Pro on it, if I want to swap it with my current HDD that I would have taken out to fit spare in, would it still work so I could retriev stuff?

I only ask as I couldn't use this current HDD with all the stuff on it, with my new other PC I just built, so I bought a new HDD for that one.

 

[i_am_mowerman]

Sorry, I really couldn't expess what I meant.
I mean that, using another HDD and insatlling XP from go works, but when I just tried sticking in my old HDD that I wanted to use in my new PC, it wouldnt have none of it, so I needed to buy a new one.

So, with my current PC, if I were to swap my old HDD with a new one, but then decide to swap it back to my old HDD, would it still work? Or does something change in BIOS or something when I install my new HDD, therefor making my original old HDD not usable?

 

[i_am_mowerman]

K thanks I'll try that tonight!