thegammingperson1994 said:
Ok, thanks. I remember a long time ago I took out a master harddrive from one computer and put it as the slave in my current computer and it worked fine, but I guess that's because it wasn't the master. That stinks! What does microsoft think were going to do? Copy their operating system? So, I have XP, and no, I'm planning on keeping the old harddrive. So should I back up everything to DVDs or just buy an external harddrive and back everything up to that? I've run out of renewals for my XP software (from previous problems) so will I have to buy a new OS?
P.S. My computer is a custom computer, so I believe the OS is storebought. I built my computer with a friend, and I'm not sure where/how he got the software, so I'm not sure what to do.
Edited because I just thought of something :)
If all you want to do it put the drive in as a secondary drive to get the data off, then that should not be a problem. The problem arises if you want to use the OS on that drive and use the drive as the boot drive. With the advent of XP (if not earlier), Micro$oft started tying the OS to a specific computer with the activation process. Thus, an installed version of XP will not run on a different computer...you must do a clean re-install of XP for it to work. And yes, it is because Micro$oft does not want to you copy the OS from computer to computer.
As to backing up, it would likely be easier to an external hard drive, but DVD would work as well. But, if you are going to "buy" an external drive (i.e. you don't already have one), then I would suggest just buying a new internal drive to use and an external enclosure for the old drive. Then use the new internal drive on the new build/upgrade and keep the old drive but put it in the external enclosure. Once you get the new drive up and running, you can then copy the data files over to it and wipe the old drive in the enclosure and then use it as an external backup drive. But, that is just me.