Windows 7: Add my old hard drive with XP?

hi all, im new to this!



i recently bought a new Compaq with Windows 7 and i was wondering if i could install my old hard drive (that has a Windows XP OS) in this computer to access all my files and for some extra storage. is this possible? and if so how can i go about doing it?

thanks!

Yes, you can do it.

However, the big thing that would decide how to do it is what you will see when you take off the side panel of your computer. What type of cable, is there a spare connection on the current one, is it IDE or ESATA, do you have room, etc.

The process is really simple, but if you haven't done it before then things might look a bit confusing.

My suggestion would be to go to youtube.com and do a search on adding a second hard drive. Then you can watch and see others explain how it is done and it will help you get the idea.

Jim

its older hard drive maybe 4 years old, but its a ESATA. i have it all hooked up and windows 7 see it in some places but it wont show up in My Computer!

If your familiar with the BIOS, you can interrupt the computer startup and see if both hard drives are shown.

When your computer starts up it will tell you what key to press to get into the BIOS.

Jim

ive done that, and it shows up as well. this is one of the areas it shows up. the highlighted HD is the one that i installed where as the under lined one is the hard drive that came with the computer... im not sure if this helps or not!

Esata in an external case? Are you connected via SATA? Does disk management show the drive?

This should be easy.

Open control panel. then click on "system and security" then click on "create and format hard disk partitions." That will start disk manager.

When disk manager opens, you wills ee the display has two panes, an upper one that lists all of the partitions the system can "see" and a lower one that should have one horizontal bar for each physical storage device Windows has detected. Find the one that corresponds to your "old" drive and right click anywhere in the horizontal bar for that device.

Click on " change drive letters and paths" and from the dialog assign an unused drive letter to the device Click "OK" then close the disk manager window. You drive should now show up in Windows Explorer under the drive letter you just assigned.

You hooked up this old hard drive to a thin red cable? Or a wide (ribbon) cable? And your computer boots up to Windows 7?

Jim

Hard Drive Recovery Tutorial - How To Slave A Hard Drive

i understand everything up untill you say right click and click on 'change drive letters and paths" it wont allow me to click on it!