2nd hard drive install

[jim]

is there anything to be aware of for adding a 2nd ATA (standard 40gb) hard drive to a
Vista Ultimate machine?

will it tilt activation or something else?

 

[Jon]

is there anything to be aware of for adding a 2nd ATA (standard 40gb) hard
drive to a Vista Ultimate machine?

will it tilt activation or something else?

Probably have to initialize it in Disk Management .. .that would probably be
about it.

 

[R. C. White, MVP]

Hi, Jim.

Should be no problem at all.

Shut down and power off your computer. Physically plug in the new drive and
make sure your BIOS recognizes it on reboot. (This varies by computer, so
I'll leave the details for later if you have a problem.) Then reboot into
Vista.

In Vista, use Disk Management (diskmgmt.msc) to create one or more
partitions on your new HD, format it/them, and assign the drive letter(s)
you choose. As you probably know, "drive" letters are not assigned to the
physical drives, but to the individual volumes (partitions and logical
drives) on each physical drive. So it's a good idea to also right-click on
the volume (in the Graphical View) and use Properties to give each volume a
name. Then, even if a later change in your HD configuration causes the
"drive" letters to change, you will still be able to recognize the volume by
its name.

You will not need to re-activate Vista for this.

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(e-mail address removed)
Microsoft Windows MVP
(Running Windows Mail in Vista Ultimate x64)

 

[Guest]

Is it possible to plug in the hard drive from another machine (my old laptop)
that is already loaded with XP and read it on my new machine that has VISTA?
I have the attachment that plugs into the USB port? Or will it make me
reformat the disk?

 

[Rick Rogers]

Hi,

You won't be able to boot the XP installation, but you should be able to
read the files stored on it. You cannot boot from an USB drive.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org

 

[Adam Albright]

Is it possible to plug in the hard drive from another machine (my old laptop)
that is already loaded with XP and read it on my new machine that has VISTA?
I have the attachment that plugs into the USB port? Or will it make me
reformat the disk?

If you have XP or any OS for that matter on another drive it only is
seen as just another application by the current OS you're running. In
other words if you have Vista installed now and you plug in a drive
that has XP, if you look in Explorer you'll see the XP windows folder
and all that goes with, but you'll still be running Vista.

A operating system MUST be installed to run.

There's been all kind of other posts how to override Vista and go back
to XP.