BleepingComputer.com: New Vista System, Can I Add 2nd Hdd ?

I just bought a new Gateway GT5674 it's running an AMD Phenom 9500 quad. 3 GB ram. This system came with Vista home premium as the OS. I have a 160GB SATA loaded with XP Pro that was the boot drive in my old system, can I install this drive as a second hdd into my vista box without it trying to boot XP? Will I need to set bios for second drive? This will be installed on one of the open SATA ports on the mobo. I'm new to SATA drives, will I need to change the jumper from master to slave ? or would it be the master on the second channel


So far I have no complaints with Vista other than being lost in a new OS and fumbling around to find things.

Sorry for the long winded question, but wanted to try and answer as many questions as possible.


Thanks, Jay

The MBR is on C: and the boot order should keep the second drive from booting. The BIOS can let you change the boot order should you ever want to boot to XP, but I'm not sure if either OS will recognize the other without repairing the OS or otherwise modifying the MBR. Newer SATA drives don't have jumpers for master/slave. Some SATA drives have speed jumpers, check your manufacturer for jumper specs if there are any.

DJBPace07, on Aug 23 2008, 01:07 AM, said:

According to Seagate you are correct, no jumper to set with SATA. I don't want to boot to xp from this drive, only access the files and storage.

This is from seagate support

Quote

So if it sees both as master and device 0 how does the system decide which is the MBR ? I could see disaster on the horizon when it tries to boot both OS's at once!

The BIOS determines what it looks for when selecting an MBR to use. In general, it'll just take the first one that it finds. You can work around this by specifying (in the BIOS) that the second drive isn't to be booted from. As I recall, you usually press F2 on a Gateway to access the BIOS.

The easiest thing to do is to format the drive. If you want to save stuff off of it, hook it up, transfer the stuff to be saved to the new drive, format the old drive, then transfer the saved stuff back to it.

BTW - If you try to boot from the XP disk, it'll likely fail because of all the hardware changes between the old XP system and this new one.

Finally, another option is to get an external enclosure for the old hard drive and use it to access the drive.

usasma, on Aug 23 2008, 09:49 AM, said:

John,
I think your transfer idea is a good plan, I'll do that. Itwas a worry of mine that XP would try to boot and mess up the system. I hope you're right on that.

Thanks

On a Gateway you can press F10 as it boots and it will give you a menu where you can select which device to boot from.

In the event that it does boot from the XP disk no harm will be done - and most likely XP will just lock up during the boot process and refuse to do anything. It won't mess up the Vista installation as long as you don't try to modify things in the boot stuff on the drive (like Startup Repair) rather than in the BIOS - which is what the F2/F10 stuff is.

Ok, I added the drive from my old system ( was my old xp boot drive) the system see's it and assigned a drive letter, but when I access it I am getting a lot of "User access control " popups asking me to change ownership of each and every file I try to open this is driving me nuts! All I want to do is transfer my email addy's , favorites and picture files and some other data. Is there a way to give me permission over the whole drive ? Again, I'm running Vista Home Premium 32 bit


Thanks, Jay