New installation of Windows

[gassan777]

Hi everyone,

My HDD was getting too full and I bought a new one: faster and bigger one. Now I would like to install Windows on the new hard disk and make it primary for 2 reasons: because it is faster and because I would like fresh XP install since I have been using mine for over 2 years without reformatting.

Questions:

1) I guess it is very easy to make other hard disk primary? I have SATA drives. I guess simply change in BIOS?

2) Windows will not clean my new hard disk before installing itself, right? I already moved some stuff to it from old hard disk and I wouldn't wanna move it back again.

3) Can I have Windows on both hard disks temporarily to make sure new one has no problems?

Thanks!

[onearmedpanda]

1) you make your hard drive the master hd (primary one) by using a chord that should've come with your hard drive, it should go from your motherboard to the slave (secondary) hard drive and then to your master. so where your hard drive is plugged into that chord chooses whether it's the primary or not.

2) windows will delete everything on the hard drive i am pretty sure; i would back up all those files on the new hd before you installed it

3) and yes you can have windows on both hard drives no problem

[Seshomaru Samma]

2) Windows will not clean my new hard disk before installing itself, right? I already moved some stuff to it from old hard disk and I wouldn't wanna move it back again.

this depends on how many partitions you have on the drive,

when you install windows it formats the partition (not that disc) that you install to.

you can make two partitions ,install windows on the first and put all your data on the second, this way if you ever need to reinstall your data will be safe.

you can use the gparted live CD to part your disc

[eddacker]

HELLO!

Depending on how exacting you want to be I would partition my new drive and install XP on a clean formatted partition.

Typically a 20-30GB C:\ partition (40-60 if you plan on upgrading to Vista someday) followed by a ??GB My Documents:\ partition for (most) everything else. Not knowing what you have now with the moved data it is difficult to be more helpful as to proceedures.

And, yes,

what onearmed;samma said

: you can use the existing windows OS to install the new version on the new drive and then 'switch' things to eventually reassign the old drive to its new role.