2 sata hard drives with Windows XP installed.

I have a 200gb hard drive with Windows XP installed on it. The os has been corrupted and won't start up. So, instaed of trying to fix it, I am thinking about buying a 2nd sata hard drive, connecting it to my computer, installing Windows XP on that, boot up my computer like new, transfer all my files from my old sata drive to the new sata drive, then format the old sata drive so Windows XP is off it and just use it for extra storage.

My questions is.... I've heard sata hard drives don't use the master/slave jumper settings. So, when both hard drives are plugged into my computer, how does it know which hard drive to boot to Windows off of? Obviously, I want it to boot to the new hard drive with the fresh Windows install on it. How can I make sure it does that? I'm worried it'll try to boot to the old hard drive and I'll still have the same problems. Or worse, it''l try to boot to both and be totally messed up! Thoughts? Suggestions? Fixes?

 

Just go in your BIOS and chose the bootup options. Both hard drives will show up. You choose the priority of what the operating system boots off of. When you are installing the operating system, just disconnect the old drive to simplify installation.

 

Just go in your BIOS and chose the bootup options. Both hard drives will show up. You choose the priority of what the operating system boots off of.

Sounds great. Thanks for the advice Daanii. How do I go about getting into my BIOS and choosing bootup options?

 

That depends on your BIOS. But here is a lowdown.

1, Boot into BIOS & note down the current attached HDD model no.
2. When you attach the new HDD, again go into your BIOS & note down the HDD model no.
3. After you have installed the Windows XP on new HDD, attach the old HDD & again go into BIOS. There would be some option called Boot Sequence or Boot Preference. Go into that & select new HDD as the first boot device. Save & exit.

 

On many computers you get into the BIOS by repeatedly pressing the delete key as soon as you turn it on. On other computers it is another key. It depends on the motherboard.

Once you are in the BIOS, you should be able to find a screen that says boot priority, or something like that. It will have the various boot devices (hard disk, CD drive, floppy drive), and you can assign priority.

I just did a similar thing, buying a new SATA drive, hooking it up, and installing Windows on it. Then I hooked up the old drive (in my case the old one is an IEDE) and now use it as extra storage. It was only at that point that I went in and assigned the boot priority.

Since in my case the two hard drives are of different sizes, it was easy to tell the difference in assigning boot priority. If your drives are of the same size, you may need to do as RSInfo suggests and note down the numbers so you can tell the drives apart when assigning boot priority.

 

One other thing. When I installed Windows XP on my new SATA disk drive, it showed up as a 127 GB drive even though it is really 500 GB.

I went ahead with the installation, and later found out that you need to install at least Service Pack 2 for Windows XP to see anything more than 127 GB on a SATA drive. Once I installed SP2, I could expand the partition to the full 500 GB size.

You may already know this, since you have a 200 GB SATA drive already, but I thought I would mention it.