Installing Windows in new drive

[darkstar_legend]

okay, heres the situation. i have 2 hard drives, 80gb(primary) and 40gb(secondary). both are almost filled to capacity. both have windows installed. i recently purchased a 160gb hard drive and am planning on using that as the primary disk. i plan on transferring all the files from the 40gb onto the new drive, and use the 40gb as a spare external hard drive.

now ive never installed windows on a pc before and i just want to make sure i do everything right before i actually start.

would appreciate getting some answers.

if after installing windows on the new 160gb disk, install all the necessary drivers for the hardware, etc., i remove it and replace it with the previous 80gb drive and boot from that, would that be okay?

and, when installing windows, should i remove the other drives first, install windows on the new disk, then add the other drives as slave to transfer files?

here how i plan on doing it:

1. remove primary and secondary drives.

2. insert new hard drive.

3. install windows on that.

4. boot.

5. install drivers and stuff.

6. turn off.

7. insert one of the previous hard disk as slave. the new one being master.

8. boot, change bios to take into account the addition of the slave drive.

9. reboot.

10. end?

is that right?

[GET OFF AXLS BACK]

Im not that big on this to be honest but what you should allways do is Backup files and data just incase.

Santana or High will be along soon enough, they will help im sure

[santana]

Yeah, that's about it. I wouldn't worry too much about backing anything up on the old hard drive. I've done the same thing several times before and have never lost any data. Just make sure that when you add the old hard drives to transfer data to the new one, you set the jumpers correctly; you don't want to have 2 drives set to master. Either use Cable Select on all drives, or set the new drive to Master and the old drives to Slave.

The way you plan on doing it is fine.

And to answer your other question, yes, you can swap the 80Gb drive back in with no problems. Just make sure that the BIOS recognizes it before you start Windows.

[darkstar_legend]

thanks man. youre a legend.

[santana]

thanks man. youre a legend.

You're welcome, and damn right! rock1