Will my files stay?

[Athlonanime]

hello-

Im building a new computer but i want to keep a 160gb HDD. The HDD has a lot of files on it that i want to keep is it possible to take that HDD out and put it in the new computer with out haveing to reformat it? How dose it work just plug it in and it will be ready to go with the new system? Right now it is called "G" Drive. That is the drive letter. When i install it in the new computer will the letter stay the same or will i have to change a partions or what ever it is called? Thanks

[Jarhed7276]

If you are going to slave the drive into the new system then there shouldn't be a problem. If it is going to be the primary drive (with the OS on it) then you will want to reformat it unless the chipset on the new motherboard is the same as what is on the old board.

As for the drive letter it depends on how you partition the new hard drive. If you partition the new drive as C,D,E,F then the old drive will remain G. Anything more or less then the old drive will be the next letter after the last letter on the new hard drive.

[[Neo770]]

If this drive is currently not the boot drive, cant you just stick it in and install windows on it. Or if it is, cant you install windows to a different partition or directory, that will create a dual boot with 2 windows installs, then you can et rid of the old one at a later date and still have all you data.

[HeadBand]

the way i see it it is currently a slave drive and i am assuming the os is xp and the drive is ntfs formatted in 1 partition...but if you have it differnet tell us

if you have programs installed don't expect them to work but if it is just files then you will be fine if it is going to be the slave drive on the other computer

if it is going to be the master with the os you can choose not to format the drive and leave it how it is when you are installing xp but you don't want any folder names xp will overwrite...i would recomending putting everything into a folder called documentsfromothercomputer or something then when you put on the new os you can put them in my documents or wherever you want

[Athlonanime]

Yea the 160gb HDD is the second HDD. My main one would be a 40 gb. Also is it possible to change the letter name from G to like D?

[Jarhed7276]

With Win2k or XP, yes under computer management, storage, disk management.