External Hard Drive Question

[Guest]

I recently salvaged the hard drive out of a fairly new Toshiba laptop (I
believe it was an A-55 model) and am currently using it as an external HD on
my new Toshiba A-105 laptop. The external HD still has the OS installed on it
from the previous computer. Will the presence of two similar OS's cause a
problem or should I format the external HD so as to erase its OS completely?
I'm guessing that by keeping the OS on the external drive intact the new
computer views it as another computer. Am I right? Thanks for your
input....Mr. Ed

 

[Ron Sommer]

Wrong
Another operating system is never treated as another computer.
The old OS is just wasting space.
Do you know if there is a hidden recovery partition on the old drive?
If there is then there are at least two partitions.
--
Ronald Sommer

:I recently salvaged the hard drive out of a fairly new Toshiba laptop (I
: believe it was an A-55 model) and am currently using it as an external HD
on
: my new Toshiba A-105 laptop. The external HD still has the OS installed on
it
: from the previous computer. Will the presence of two similar OS's cause a
: problem or should I format the external HD so as to erase its OS
completely?
: I'm guessing that by keeping the OS on the external drive intact the new
: computer views it as another computer. Am I right? Thanks for your
: input....Mr. Ed

 

[Guest]

Wrong
Another operating system is never treated as another computer.
The old OS is just wasting space.
Do you know if there is a hidden recovery partition on the old drive?
If there is then there are at least two partitions.
--
Ronald Sommer

:I recently salvaged the hard drive out of a fairly new Toshiba laptop (I
: believe it was an A-55 model) and am currently using it as an external HD
on
: my new Toshiba A-105 laptop. The external HD still has the OS installed on
it
: from the previous computer. Will the presence of two similar OS's cause a
: problem or should I format the external HD so as to erase its OS
completely?
: I'm guessing that by keeping the OS on the external drive intact the new
: computer views it as another computer. Am I right? Thanks for your
: input....Mr. Ed

I'm sorry, I don't know. How can I find out if there is a hidden recovery partition?

 

[Rock]

I recently salvaged the hard drive out of a fairly new Toshiba laptop (I
believe it was an A-55 model) and am currently using it as an external HD
on
my new Toshiba A-105 laptop. The external HD still has the OS installed on
it
from the previous computer. Will the presence of two similar OS's cause a
problem or should I format the external HD so as to erase its OS
completely?
I'm guessing that by keeping the OS on the external drive intact the new
computer views it as another computer. Am I right? Thanks for your
input....Mr. Ed

No, the presence of the installed OS is just taking space. That drive is
not being recognized as another computer. Just delete everything on it to
use all of it for storage.

 

[Guest]

Mr. Ed,
Ron is right, your pc is not booting from the external hard drive. I would
recover any important data, files...docs..pics...and move them to the laptop
directly and then reformat then external hard drive. I'm sure you did a good
virus scan of the hard drive before accessing the files. The last thing you
want to do is invite a virus into your pc. good luck.

 

[Guest]

No, the presence of the installed OS is just taking space. That drive is
not being recognized as another computer. Just delete everything on it to
use all of it for storage.

 

[Rock]

With the drive attached through USB right click on My Computer | Manage |
Disk Management. In the right hand pane locate the external drive, right
click on it and choose format.