old hard drive in new computer

[Brad the best]

hello , I have currently come into the possesion of a new comptuer , or should i say will tomorow how ever it was a machine iwth a 40 gb hard drive witch is not enough , it also has sp1 on it i beleive . so what i want to do is put my 4 month old 120 gb ide hard drive in , however i have about 40 gb of data on it so a format is out of the question , i also dont have a burner to put anyhting on cds or dvd's , and i have a usb prior 2.0 , so im not looking forward to it transfering for 10 hours . is there a way to simply pull out my 120 gb and put it in the new computer with out system disks or anything else . the xp on both hard drives are a oem version from work so they arent counted as legit even thow they are . im guessing a swap isnt exactly plug and play is it ? anyway if anyone has some input and information i would be very greatfull . thank you for your time .

[doctorgonzo]

What do you want to do? Do you want to use the old 120 GB drive as an additional drive in your new computer, or do you want to use it as the main C: drive on the new computer and use the 40 GB drive as your additional storage drive?

If it is the former, then all you have to do is stick it in the new computer and it is good to go.

[Panama Red]

Unless the two pc's have the same chipset, graphics and other hardware, just installing the other hard drive as the primary drive will not allow a boot. You need to boot to an XP disk and do a repair/install with only the 120Gb installed in the new pc. Look in the Tips and Tricks forums for a sticky thread by Gary Routh on how to do it. This will save all the programs and files on the 120Gb. Then you can attach the 40Gb as a slave and use it for extra storage.

[Brad the best]

i wish to use the 120 gb as a main and only drive . the 40 gb was just formated , but the 120 gb is full of info . i dont need the 40 gb in there so i would rather just take it out and put it in the computer the 120 came out of and put the 120 (my current drive ) into the new computer .

[Brad the best]

I dont have a xp disk , all i have are my graphics chip driver . so am i going to have to send this to the shop . i guess its only 40 bucks

[doctorgonzo]

Then you will need to do the trick. Go to this (http://forum.pcmech.com/showthread.php?t=43654) thread and follow the instructions: basically, it involves changing the IDE controller to "Standard Dual IDE Controller" and then doing a repair install of Windows.

[glc]

If you change the controller, you should not have to do a repair install. However, have fun getting XP reactivated if it's not legit.

[Brad the best]

guessing there is no way to do it with out a disk . i have a repair disk for my lap top with sp2 its a seanix . this is a seanix . but i guess thats just the case . will that disk do nothing . whats the dissadvantages of haveing two ide drives . and if i do have two ide drives should i put all the software on the smaller drive and then store my music files and movies on the bigger hard drive . small hd for all software and big one for everything else ? good idea or bad one . thanks for all the fast replys