Switching Hard Drives

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BarePaw

Member
I am currently running a 250GB hard drive in my computer. I want to put a 40GB hard drive in with it, dedicate the 40 to windows and use the 250 for other stuff. Can I reinstall Windows XP to the smaller drive without losing everything on the bigger drive?
 
here is one way

stick in teh 40g take out the 250g. install XP on the 40g. slave the 250g to the 40 and copy over what you want to keep. take out the 40g, leave the 250 in. boot from cd and reformat the hd. stick in the 40 and slave the 250 to the 40.
 
Problem is I have about 60 gigs worth of stuff I need to save. I'm looking into getting a large external drive to aid in the process.
 
This really depends on exactly what you are concerned with losing.

If you install the 40 gig and it is blank and install windows xp then
obviously you won't lose anything on the 40 gig. If it has stuff
on it and you reformat, then you will lose everything on the 40
gig.

If you put the 250 gig in as a slave drive then you won't
lose anything off of the drive itself, but you will have to reinstall
your programs and applications to the 40 gig so that windows
will recognize the applications. For instance, if you have
microsoft word on the 250 gig and you make it a slave drive
you will have to reinstall word on the 40gig so windows will
recognize that you have word installed. The documents created
with word will still be on 250 gig. Your pictures, music etc will
still be on 250 gig.

If you are worried about losing stuff on the 250 gig then unplug it
while you install the windows xp on the 40 gig. Once the 40 gig
is installed then plug the 250 gig in as a slave drive and it should
show up as the D drive.

Hope this didn't make you more confused.

Good luck
 
ramdge said:
If you put the 250 gig in as a slave drive then you won't
lose anything off of the drive itself, but you will have to reinstall
your programs and applications to the 40 gig so that windows
will recognize the applications. For instance, if you have
microsoft word on the 250 gig and you make it a slave drive
you will have to reinstall word on the 40gig so windows will
recognize that you have word installed. The documents created
with word will still be on 250 gig. Your pictures, music etc will
still be on 250 gig.
Click to expand...

If I do it this way will I lose the space on the big drive that was used by Windows and other programs, or will newly saved files overwrite the old program files?
 
the 250 will not be changed at all, to my understandings. once you have XP on the 40g and everything else coppied over then reformat the 250g drive.
 
BarePaw,

If you have 60 gigs of saved data(documents, music, movies, etc.) you won't be able to put that on your 40 gig hard drive..you need more space unless maybe you can compress (which would take forever :) ) the 60 gigs of data if the 250 gig HD is an ntfs drive.
 
I think I'm going to get a 500, partition it, install Windows, then slave the 250, pull off the stuff I need, and reformat it.
 
Last edited:
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