Hey everyone,
I'm currently working on building my first computer . I've got all my parts ordered and on the way; I'm replacing the Motherboard, CPU, RAM, and adding a graphics card. I'm trying to save some money by avoiding purchasing Windows 7 because my windows XP is working fine. The problem is that my OS is on my old hard drive, which is an IDE drive. My new Hard drive is a SATA drive. Initially my thought was to connect my new hard drive to my old motherboard (since it can actually run windows) and clone it over. The problem is my old motherboard doesn't have a SATA connection. My new mother board has an IDE and SATA connection but I'm not sure how I can copy the info over. If I try and run my old Hard Drive with XP already on it I'm assuming its not going to start up. That wouldn't be an issue if I had the install CD's but I don't. Does anyone have any idea how I can solve my problem? Here's how I'm assuming I need to work this out.
1) I need to figure out a way to get XP up and running on my new motherboard with my old IDE Hard Drive without the install CD's
2) After that I think I could figure out how to get a cloning program running and copy it over, then switch the startup drive in my BIOS
Any help I could get would be great! Thanks! This community Rocks!
I'm currently working on building my first computer . I've got all my parts ordered and on the way; I'm replacing the Motherboard, CPU, RAM, and adding a graphics card. I'm trying to save some money by avoiding purchasing Windows 7 because my windows XP is working fine. The problem is that my OS is on my old hard drive, which is an IDE drive. My new Hard drive is a SATA drive. Initially my thought was to connect my new hard drive to my old motherboard (since it can actually run windows) and clone it over. The problem is my old motherboard doesn't have a SATA connection. My new mother board has an IDE and SATA connection but I'm not sure how I can copy the info over. If I try and run my old Hard Drive with XP already on it I'm assuming its not going to start up. That wouldn't be an issue if I had the install CD's but I don't. Does anyone have any idea how I can solve my problem? Here's how I'm assuming I need to work this out.
1) I need to figure out a way to get XP up and running on my new motherboard with my old IDE Hard Drive without the install CD's
2) After that I think I could figure out how to get a cloning program running and copy it over, then switch the startup drive in my BIOS
Any help I could get would be great! Thanks! This community Rocks!