win Xp upgrade and file transfer

[Awatson]

Hi

I'm upgrading my win98 system to WinXp
I have 2 hard drives on 98 one for system files, and one for data

I bought a new 160G HD to replace the other two and to put Win XP on.
Installed WinXp on the new, partioned it to two drives, and now I'm trying to copy files from my old data hard drive.

I thought I might simply be able to boot XP with the old hard drive in the rig, and copy. But tried that and the drive doesn't even show up.

I tried all 3 drives booting from Win98, but that didn't work either It saw the drive but wouldn't let me access it.
I'm not sure if its beacuse their on different file systems, or if Win xp is not recognizing all of my IDE channels or if its a hardware problem.

I would just throw one drive in a different rig, and network them, but it would take me a bit to get my hands on another computer.
I was thinking about upgrading the WIn98 system drive to XP, but am not sure how that would affect the data hard drive. Would that also be converted to the NTFS file system?, and if so would the data still be there.If that is in fact the problem. Any easy fixes out there? Note: I don't have much free space, but since I don't care about the program files ( I will do a clean install of programs on the new HD) I can free up 20 or 30 GB. The amt of data I want to move is about 35GB.

Thanks for any help
Adam

 

[mjjohn]

I have done this a couple of times with success.
Install new drive - selected as 'Master'.
Disconnect IDE cable from old drive.
Install XP - partition drive as desired.
Make sure all partitions are formatted - FAT or NTFS.
Reconnect old drive - selected as 'slave'if on the same cable as the new drive. Otherwise select 'master' if on IDE channel 2 - or 'slave' if you already have a CDR or DVD on channel 2.
You should see all the drives/partitions when you start up.
Now you can copy all your data to a partition on your new drive, format the old drive the way you want, and move the data back to the old drive if that is where you want it.



For it is not what is seen, but what is not seen.