I want to make a payment a second sata drive.can i copy drive 1 onto drive 2, swap drive 2 to drive 1's place and run xp?

drive 1 is 180gb sata. drive 2 is 400gb sata. drive 1 have a crash and i recovered. however there is information that i can access from before the crash, but i cannot remove it. i want to reformat the drive to be for of late the xp and programs. can i preserve my settings and programs without have to reinstall everything? would it be easier to just verbs important notes to drive 2 and keep drive one the passageway it is?

Answer:
Hey Dude,

Do this.
Start, Accessories, System tools, Files and settings Transfer wizard.
This is your best bet. HOWEVER, try to restore it on another machine FIRST. You will probably own to reinstall ALL of your programs, but your data and profiles should be okay.

Good luck.

You may inevitability a 3rd party utility to whip off a backup of the entire drive.

Also try from the "run" command "NTBACKUP". If you own pro, this works great.

Tom
Yes you can copy your important background to drive 2. If you want to format drive 1, do one thing, find Norton spectre 2003 (as I am using it) or any other backup program and make backup of your drive 1 to drive 2.
Now format your drive 1 and install fresh Windows XP, later install Norton Ghost 2003 or what ever program you have used for backup. Now Using this program restore your backup to drive 1 and when it asks whether to overwrite window, tickmark that box and it will restore your drive 1 all facts to drive 1. You will not loose anything, except any data you stored after you hold taken your back-up.
I forgot to tell you that beside Norton Ghost you can make backup of your drive 1 on DVDs. Then you can receive your drive 2 as a primary and drive 1 as slave. Format drive 2 and install fresh Windows XP on it, restore the your PC from DVD using this program and lateron you can copy all your essential data on your topical primary drive and then format your mature drive 1 and then form a practice to use it to save adjectives your personal files on it. Also save one wager on of your primary drive on this drive for future use.
Good luck.
You enjoy a couple of options:
With SATA drives, you can set up a RAID array using RAID 0 (zero) will create what is call drive mirroring, this usually requires drives of identical specs (size), this will create a duplicate drive near all your "C" drive information on "D" drive which your operating system will not see until you change the drives) it can be swapped at any time (system shutdown will be required). I use this on my print server, using two 120Gb Western Digital SATA drives.
There is software that will "ghost" a drive for you (like Norton Ghost), this copies the existing drive to another.
You can also use utilities from any drive manufacturer (Maxtor uses Maxblast and Western digital uses drive copy) this will copy the entire separator of one drive to another. Note* both drives need not be like peas in a pod brand, but the utility you use should be the "new" drive manufacturer's one. Usually, you download the utility from the web, or the businessman may supply the utility on a floppy shipped with the strange hard drive. you next boot your PC with that floppy and run the utility. If you are competent to set different boot devices (like CD-rom or USB) then you can use that prospect to run the utility if you don't have a floppy. I essentially use WD drives, and have be very pleased next to them.

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