Michel Vaillant said:
Just disconnect your CD Rom drive, connect your hard drive to its IDE
cable
(second bus best) and power connector ... Boot your pc (BIOS IDE on auto,
probably it's already default) and the in windows explorer just copy the
files to your disk and use the Computer Managemant Console to repartition
/
format the disk). When you're done disconnect the hard drive and reconnect
your cd-rom.
You don't have to worry about jumper settings on your drives and you can
leave the hard disk on a staple cd's or books so you don't need to use
extra
long cables or start bolting. Just make sure your virusscanner is up to
date
and running, cause you never know what's on the hard disk.
M. Vaillant
Jim:
Michel's recommendations are basically sound, but let me flesh it out a
bit...
You've indicated that you plan to use the old HD as a backup drive and
install it in your new computer. So it will be necessary that the jumper
setting on that drive is set correctly. You didn't indicate what other
drives are installed on your new computer (excepting its HD of course). If
you will be installing the old drive as a slave to your working HD, then you
should make certain the old drive is jumpered as Slave. You can, if you
wish, also connect the old drive as Secondary Master or Secondary Slave.
Just make sure the jumper is set correctly depending upon what configuration
you choose. (I'm assuming in all this that your present configuration is
*not* a Cable Select one. If it is, you will, of course, need to set your
drive to CS and make sure that you've connected it to the appropriate
connector of your IDE cable).
After the old drive is properly connected, boot up and access Windows
Explorer. The old drive and its contents should be reflected there. Move
whatever data files you want from the old drive to the new one. Note that
you probably won't be able to successfully move *programs* from the old
drive to the new one. In most cases you'll need the program's installation
media to install the program on your new computer's drive. But sometimes it
does work for more-or-less trivial programs.
After you've copied whatever files you want from the old disk to the new
one, access XP's Disk Management utility (Start > right-click My Computer >
Manage > Disk Management). If you've correctly connected/configured the old
drive it will be reflected there. As Michel has stated, you can use that
utility to format the old drive and multi-partition it if you want. Use the
Help screens to walk you through the process.
Anna
