Installing XP SATA HDD on NEW HP Computer Question

coverland

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Dec 10, 2011
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I have an older Dell that I purchased a 1TB Baracuda SATA HDD for about a year ago. The Dell has crashed recently with a MB failure and I'd like to pick up a new HP on sale at my local store and install this HDD into it. The existing HDD is a Baracuda SATA Seagate and has XPpro on it with a ton of family info that I don't want to just lose and start over with so again.

I'm hoping to purchase a new machine, remove the new Windows 7 OEM HDD and install mine in hopes I'll be up and running before long on a new machine with my existing HDD. Any ideas or pointers on this approach? What should I look for (if anything)? Thanks



HP machine I was looking at:

http://www.walmart.com/ip/HP-1TB-p7-1003wb/16595246
 
Outlander is right. You will not be able to boot from the drive. Install it as a secondary drive. Then you will have access to all of your data.

You were lucky. The Dell could have crashed with a hard drive failure. And that could have cost you all of your data. Backups this time?
 

coverland

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Dec 10, 2011
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Thanks for the replies guys. I'm really not overly anxious to get into Windows 7. I have it on a laptop and there's quite a bit of XP software investment that wont run directly on W7 (Home Pro). any experience with Windows 7 Ultimate?