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A while back the HDD in our laptop had a hiccup - some data was lost, but the system recovered and has continued to operate - although sometimes the MBR gets its knickers in a twist and we get 'No operating system found'! Trying to install some software has revealed that there are some Windows components missing / damaged (similar to Rats trouble with Outlook 2010), so new install of Vista required. However, I was thinking last night it might be better to buy a new drive and install Vista on that, and reformat the old drive and use it as a backup / temp storage till it dies completely. So, I was thinking of swapping in a new drive, install Vista to it, then reinstall the old drive in the secondary bay. Will this work, or will it throw a wobbly with 2 drives with OS installed?
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Easy peasy, take out your old, install your new (in the same bay*) load your OS, pop your old drive in the secondary bay and format.
You may need to fiddle with the disk manager tool to set the partition status on your second old drive. I have even copied the files over from the old drive to the new before formatting.
*important, there may be a hardware boot priority
Last edited by: Zero on Wed 14 Sep 11 at 08:09
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Why not simply "Slave-up" the old drive to the new one? then you could still access the old data and use it. as well as using the old drive as storage. The operating system wont interfere in normal use, but should you ever need it, its there to boot from in an emergency!
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New drive installed (I got a 250Gb on offer from PCW at £30) which was easy. Installing Vista less so - but that may be due to trying to use a DELL OEM disc on a HP... After swapping the drives backwards and forwards a few times I got a driver on the new drive for the ethernet card which allowed net access and downloading the right drivers. Now for installing Vista SP2... Not had both drives co-existing yet as I only have one caddy at the moment.
Was amazed at how small and light the drives are - the box (about 500% too big!) felt empty.
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HDD shuffle! - Zero
