USB 2.0 ide hard drive external kit - can I use with old "primary" hard drive ?

[Mary Fowler Leek]

I will be moving to a new computer with WinXP home installed. It currently has one IDE hard drive. There is a slot for a second drive, which I plan to fill with my slave drive out of my old computer. Both my primary and secondary drives in the old computer are just months old.

I also have the above named kit by ADS Tech. Can I move the old primary hard drive into the external USB 2.0 kit box and install it on the new computer, in order to have easy and quick access to my documents folder, files, etc., of my old system? Of course, this drive will have the old installation of Windows XP home on it but it will become a type of slave, won't it, and not upset the new OS?

I think I know the answer but I'd rather ask a goofy question, than do something stupid that might require hours to fix. I also have the Maxtor one touch drive, but don't trust myself to correctly copy directly from that to a completely new pre-installed setup of WinXP. I just run it weekly as a backup to current system, to cover myself in case of hardware failure. I also backup to the internal slave drive. Can you tell I don't want to ever face having to re-enter years of financial and genealogical records! Ha

As always, many, many thanks to all of you who so willingly and kindly help.


~Mary
mleek at arkwest dot com
mmleek at hotmail dot com

 

[Anna]

I will be moving to a new computer with WinXP home installed. It currently
has one IDE hard drive. There is a slot for a second drive, which I plan to
fill with my slave drive out of my old computer. Both my primary and
secondary drives in the old computer are just months old.

I also have the above named kit by ADS Tech. Can I move the old primary hard
drive into the external USB 2.0 kit box and install it on the new computer,
in order to have easy and quick access to my documents folder, files, etc.,
of my old system? Of course, this drive will have the old installation of
Windows XP home on it but it will become a type of slave, won't it, and not
upset the new OS?

I think I know the answer but I'd rather ask a goofy question, than do
something stupid that might require hours to fix. I also have the Maxtor
one touch drive, but don't trust myself to correctly copy directly from that
to a completely new pre-installed setup of WinXP. I just run it weekly as a
backup to current system, to cover myself in case of hardware failure. I
also backup to the internal slave drive. Can you tell I don't want to ever
face having to re-enter years of financial and genealogical records! Ha

As always, many, many thanks to all of you who so willingly and kindly help.

~Mary
mleek at arkwest dot com
mmleek at hotmail dot com

Mary:
Your instincts are correct. You can indeed do what you propose, i.e.,
transfer your previous "slave" HD from your "old" computer to the new one so
that it can be used for additional storage and/or backup on the latter
machine. You can connect that drive on either the Primary (Slave) or
Secondary (Master or Slave) IDE channel on your new machine, whichever is
more convenient in terms of connecting the IDE ribbon cable & power plug.
(I'm assuming, of course, that we're dealing with PATA drives here).

You can also, as you propose, transfer your "old" HD containing the XP OS to
your USB external HD enclosure. There won't be any problem utilizing this
drive for storage/backup purposes or access thereof.

You mention that you also have another USBEHD, the Maxtor one. Is there some
special reason why you are using two USBEHDs?

You might want to consider using a disk imaging program such as Symantec's
Norton Ghost or Acronis True Image to "clone" the contents of your drive(s)
for backup purposes. The advantage of this kind of backup system is that
you're creating an exact duplicate of the drive you're "cloning", in effect,
a bit-for-bit copy of that drive. This includes the OS, all your programs &
user-created data, in short, everything. You could use this process to clone
the drive to another internal drive or to your USBEHD. Or to both. The
process is relatively simple and reasonably quick.
Anna