Installing a new SATA hard drive

Hi.

Sorry if this question is an obvious one but I'm fairly new to this. I want
to install a new larger SATA hard drive, my motherboard supports this
although at the moment it has an ATA hard drive. I want to use the SATA as
the master and the old drive as a slave.

Because my Win XP installation is old and cluttered I plan to install the
new drive, format it and install a fresh XP on it before transferring my
files from the old drive to the new one. Once this is done I will reformat
the old drive for use as a back up.

Can I use ATA and SATA in the same system? Will it be possible to do the
above i.e have a fresh XP install that will 'see' the old drive.

Any help, comments, tips or pointers to online articles would be very
welcome.

Thanks in advance.

David

David Robinson <robincr551 RemoveThis @ntlworld.com> wrote:

> Sorry if this question is an obvious one but I'm fairly new to this.
> I want to install a new larger SATA hard drive, my motherboard
> supports this although at the moment it has an ATA hard drive.
> I want to use the SATA as the master and the old drive as a slave.

Master and slave only applys to the drives on an ATA ribbon cable.
So you actually want the SATA as primary and the old drive as secondary.

> Because my Win XP installation is old and cluttered I plan to
> install the new drive, format it and install a fresh XP on it before
> transferring my files from the old drive to the new one. Once
> this is done I will reformat the old drive for use as a back up.

> Can I use ATA and SATA in the same system?

Yes.

> Will it be possible to do the above i.e have
> a fresh XP install that will 'see' the old drive.

Yes.

> Any help, comments, tips or pointers to
> online articles would be very welcome.

Its generally best to use the Files and Settings Transfer
Wizard in your situation. Save that stuff to the old drive.
If there isnt enough room for that, there are ways around that.

Its a bit safer to have the old drive unplugged
initially, just have the SATA drive plugged in.

Just boot the XP CD and see if it can see the SATA drive.

If it cant, press F4 when the booted XP CD says
to do that and load the SATA drivers off the floppy.

Install XP on the SATA.

Once that is up and running, plug in the old drive
again and run the files and settings transfer wizard
again to import the files and settings off the old install.