Hard drive switch

[Travis King]

I have an 80 gig hard drive as C and a 120 gig hard drive as D on my
computer. I plan on physically switching the hard drives around so the 120
gig HD is the master and the 80 gig is the slave. How will this affect the
activation on XP? Will this count as a component change or not since I'll
still be using the same hard drives. Thanks.

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

I have an 80 gig hard drive as C and a 120 gig hard drive as D on my
computer. I plan on physically switching the hard drives around so the 120
gig HD is the master and the 80 gig is the slave. How will this affect the
activation on XP? Will this count as a component change or not since I'll
still be using the same hard drives. Thanks.

This won't affect your WinXP activation. However, you must make
sure that Windows will continue to run off drive C:.

 

[Travis King]

I'm probably going to reformat and start over because I also intend on
partitioning the 120GB into two 60 gig segments. The other 60-gig segment I
plan on putting Windows Vista on as soon as (if it does) it becomes a public
beta.

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

My preference would go like this:
- Partition 1: 15 GBytes, WinXP
- Partition 2: 30 GBytes, Vista
- Partition 3: 75 GBytes, shared data partition
- Partition 4: 15 MBytes, XOSL

A great many people post questions about how to deal
with a multi-booting setup when they need to remove one
OS. This is always a problem when using the native Windoes
boot manager because the OSs are interdependent. It
ceases to be a problem when using a proper boot manager
such as XOSL (which is free!).

 

[Travis King]

I use very close to 15GB for XP already, so a 15 gig partition probably
wouldn't be big enough. Actually, my original plan was to not switch the
hard drives around and do a 40, 40, and a 120 (the entire drive).
XP (C- I'm using 12.6 now, but sometimes use as much as 14.6GB
(D - Using 9.65GB on that large hard drive. I will look into this XOSL.
It will cooperate with Vista?

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

If you use 15 GBytes for WinXP then I suspect that you're
storing data on drive C:. Not a good idea . . .

XOSL will cope with just about any OS, including Vista.

 

[Travis King]

I only have 952MB used for storing data on C:, the rest is software. I've
got loads of software on this computer. I have 86 folders in the Program
Files folder if that gives you an idea. (Granted a few come with Windows.)

 

[Bruce Chambers]

I have an 80 gig hard drive as C and a 120 gig hard drive as D on my
computer. I plan on physically switching the hard drives around so the 120
gig HD is the master and the 80 gig is the slave. How will this affect the
activation on XP? Will this count as a component change or not since I'll
still be using the same hard drives. Thanks.

There will be a component change, of sorts, but that's largely
irrelevant. As you'll likely reinstall WinXP onto the new hard drive,
you will certainly have to activate the new installation. This however,
shouldn't be a problem.

There's no limit to the number of times you can reinstall and activate
the same WinXP license on the same PC. Nor is there ever a charge. Nor
does a Product Key (so long as it's not an evaluation license) ever
expire. If it's been more than 120 days since you last activated that
specific Product Key, you'll most likely be able to activate via the
Internet without problem. If it's been less, you might have to make a 5
minute phone call.

Here are the facts pertaining to activation:

Piracy Basics - Microsoft Product Activation
http://www.microsoft.com/piracy/basics/activation/

Windows Product Activation (WPA)
http://www.aumha.org/a/wpa.htm



--

Bruce Chambers

Help us help you:



They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. -Benjamin Franklin

Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of
chains and slavery? .... I know not what course others may take, but as
for me, give me liberty, or give me death! -Patrick Henry

 

[Travis King]

I knew about the activation as I've reformatted my computer several times
before. I was just curious if this would change the outcome of my
activation. Another reason I was wondering is because I have an NVIDIA
GeForceFX5600 on the way to replace my GeForce3 Ti200 so I can run Aero
Glass in Vista.

 

[James]

If you use 15 GBytes for WinXP then I suspect that you're
I have 16.4 GB of programs and OS on C:. not much data

 

[Travis King]

Well, I just signed up for the Vista public beta today.