ok,,
keeping this simple,,,,,,,,,,,,,
imagine you have access to all the stuff that would upgrade your computer but you wanted to keep your harddrive with operating system.
what is the best way to do this.?
I know my HD will be looking for my old processor and such but i want to integrate the new mini atx board/ram/video/power supply/dvd burner ect into this little HP box.
I do not want to have to reload an OS.
could i trick fvk this thing with norton ghost somehow?
Obvious question... which OS?
XP pro SP1
been there, done that. it ain't happening.
Pretty much. I dont belive its possible, or if it is probably isnt worth the effort. I'd rather start off fresh anyhow. It's easy enough to backup all your stuff and start fresh with a new drive or start over on the old one. I'm planning on building a new I7 platform this winter and was hoping to do the same thing and dual boot but that's not gonna happen. My buddy is building one in a month and i cant wait to see how it runs.
thanks guys,
Ill prob just drag/drop files to a protable flashdrive and start with a new OS load.
Buy a new hard drive and slave the old one. You will not lose anything at all, and you could re-install the OS. If your going to upgrade, why not a new harddrive?
yeah,, he does have a larger HD we could format and load the OS.
if I slave my current one , what happens with its operating sys? Will the pc boot up to the os loaded on the correct one?
Mason just installed a tera drive in his,,,,,,,,
he hooked it to sata3
booted up
loaded norton ghost to the 180gig or whatever the C drive was.
He then copied his C to the tera drive
he then removed both the C and slave drive HD and booted with the Tera.
I suppose I could get him to format one of his old HD's and the I repeat the process on my machine,,,,,,,,,,,,,
does this sound right?
an OS on a slave drive won't load, because slaving it nulls it's master boot record.
and that IS the point of ghosting a drive. you will have to reinstall all your programs you currently have on the slave drive, too.
I have never used norton ghost, but I have use power quest drive image (which I imagine is similar). Just copy your drive (via image) to the new drive. Boot the new drive in the new system. It will search and find new hardware (have driver disks ready). You will probably have to reactivate XP afterward. It can be done, I do it all the time.
CoogarXR
Basically, slaving a drive is like having a cd in the cd drive. When you want to acess it you can, and when you don't, you don't. It would show up as just another hard drive just like a cd or flash drive in my computer.
you did not catch my post,, see if the below makes better sense.
coogarxr nailed it,,,,,,,
I will have mason format his larger 700g HD.
I will then slave it to my older pc 18g hd
I will then load norton ghost on the 18g hd
I will then copy the 18g hd to the 700g hd via norton ghost
i will then remove the 18g and cable up the 700g as my new C drive
I suspect I will have to re-register my xp as stated because thats what happened to mason,, just went on line and MicroSft said good to go.
Next I will prob have to tune up my drivers., mason had to do that to a couple devices.
sound good?
upgrade to sp2 (you don't have to, but you should), mini-sysprep it, load all your parts, turn it on. re-activate windows. the sysprep will remove the machine id, and hardware registry keys, so when you turn it on it will relaod drivers and generate a new SID.
that's it.