Files on ide hard drive

[FREELINE57]

Hello! I have a old dell 4300 with a 120gb westeren digital ide with w/xp professional installed on it with files that are very important to my daughter but the problem is that for the 2nd time in one month that when she turned on the puter this message has came up. windows could not load because of this <windows root>\system32\ntoskrnl.exe I went to microsoft to research and it tells me that this file has been moved. Anyway, all i want to know can i install this drive in a new system as a slave drive eventhough it still has a os installed on it and open up the old ide drive and copy my daughters files to a new sata drive? what can i expect or is there a right way to do this? Thanks people i'll check back later gtg to work right now

[mikeL]

Yes you can, because you won't be booting the OS, just retrieving the files. I would do it from your daughters computer, then transfer (copy) the files to the sata drive.

[glc]

Slave it into a different computer and just make sure the bios is set to boot to the correct drive. You could also use a USB adapter so you wouldn't even have to open up the host computer. I have one of these - it's a VERY handy little gadget:

http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=2020&cat=HDD

[FREELINE57]

Thanks guys ... hey glc thats a neat little divice! this is what i plan to do then. I will still install it as a slave drive and transfer all of her filles to the new sata boot drive and when she is satisfied with the data she needs i will wipe the drive and then she can use it for all her music. thanks again...