Will my stuff erase?

[mrgeorgedude]

So i was told that since my comp has been going so slow it might be because my Hard drive with windows installed might be crashing

...what i wanted to do is move all my crap on the 1st HDD over to the 2nd hard drive i have and toss the 1st one...i already have about 20-30 gigs of stuff on my 2nd HDD and i was wondering if i installed windows on it if all the stuff on it will be erased?

btw...i have no way really of making back CD's or disks cuz i dont have a burner...

 

[ramdge]

If your second drive was formated NTFS and your don't change
or reformat the partition then you should be able to install
windows XP without losing the information on the second
drive. If you reformat or change the drive type from NTFS
to FAT32 or from FAT32 to NTFS then you WILL lose everything.
So be careful with that part of the XP install.

You will not be able to move the actual programs from the
first drive but you should be able to move the data (pictures,
documents, music, etc).

I wouldn't throw the first drive out until you try to reformat
it. If it continues to give you the bad sectors after you
reformat it then you might consider trashing it. If it reformats
ok then you might use it for the Windows XP and as a drive to
backup drive some of your least important data.


Good luck.

 

[mrgeorgedude]

If your second drive was formated NTFS and your don't change
or reformat the partition then you should be able to install
windows XP without losing the information on the second
drive. If you reformat or change the drive type from NTFS
to FAT32 or from FAT32 to NTFS then you WILL lose everything.
So be careful with that part of the XP install.

You will not be able to move the actual programs from the
first drive but you should be able to move the data (pictures,
documents, music, etc).

I wouldn't throw the first drive out until you try to reformat
it. If it continues to give you the bad sectors after you
reformat it then you might consider trashing it. If it reformats
ok then you might use it for the Windows XP and as a drive to
backup drive some of your least important data.


Good luck.

thanks man u helped alot...what im doing is running XP off my better hard drive and things are running quickly...then on my bad HDD i just have data i dont really care about just in case it does crash...

 

[Miles Pickens]

My suggestion would be to move everything to your primary drive, then create two partitions on your second drive - looking at your specs I'd go for 20-25/55-60 GB in that order (Partition Magaic or similar will let you do that). Copy your data to the second partition, install Xp to the smaller partition (swapping the drives master/slave settings around ), then format your new 120 GB slave and use it as a backup for a while to see if there actually is a problem.

Alternatively you could to copy everything to your backup drive then try a clean installation on your first drive, but if there is a HDD problem you'd have a problem installing XP to the secondary drive unless you partitined it as above first.

I'm no expert on HDDs, but I'd say that a "Hard drive with windows installed [that] might be crashing" would prevent your system from running, rather making it run slow.