dual hard drives running win xp

Timothy Daniels

If you have a spare 5 1/2" drive bay in the desktop, you could
use a removable hard drive that is mounted on a slide-in tray.
These assemblies are sometimes called "drive caddies" or
"mobile racks". Here is an all-aluminum mobile rack made by
Kingwin that has a cooling fan built into the bottom of the tray:

They cost about $25 from various web retailers (search Google
for the model no.). Extra trays cost between $15 and $20.
When you slide in a tray holding a hard drive that is the only
hard drive in the PC, that hard drive becomes the boot drive,
and the OS on it can't see any other drive so it can't alter
anything on the unseen and absent drive.

When you transfer the hard drive from your PC to the mobile
tray and slide it for its first bootup, you'll probably have to
re-activate the OS because it will see a new hardware environment.
You may also have to replace some of the drivers, such as for
the different mouse and other peripherals. That may be trivial
or a nightmare, depending on how different the new environment
is from the old one.

*TimDaniels*

"tonya" wrote:
>
> I have two computers I want to "combine".
> One is the kids computer, one is mine, I want to move my hard drive to
> the kids computer so that we can share the CPU, but when i want to use
> my hard drive I can boot from it, and when the kids are doing their
> thing, my hard drive won't be in use (or jeopardy!)
> I thought I would run it externally, but it does not appear to be able
> to boot that way. Is there a fairly simple way to do this?
>
>
> --
> tonya

3c273

As an alternative you may want to look into a KVM switch. Then you can use
one keyboard, mouse, and monitor with two computers.
Louis

"tonya" <> wrote in message
news:...
>
> I have two computers I want to "combine".
> One is the kids computer, one is mine, I want to move my hard drive to
> the kids computer so that we can share the CPU, but when i want to use
> my hard drive I can boot from it, and when the kids are doing their
> thing, my hard drive won't be in use (or jeopardy!)
> I thought I would run it externally, but it does not appear to be able
> to boot that way. Is there a fairly simple way to do this?
>
>
> --
> tonya

Timothy Daniels

WOO, boy. I thought that you'd just be installing XP on the new HD,
not transferring an XP installation to a new computer. That would
trigger a need to re-activate in addition to the requirement for drivers
for the new hardware. I've never tried that, and it might be easier to
just install XP in the 2nd HD after you've put it into the new computer.
Since you've nothing to lose, just try the transfer without re-installation
and see what happens.

*TimDaniels*

"rena03sb" wrote:
> Tim,
> The \"it\" I was referring to was the computer. I replaced the mobo
> in my computer with a direct replacement and when I turned on the
> computer everything booted up as if I never touched the mobo. So
> my question pertained to taking that HD and installing it in my new
> computer that I just ordered (the one with Vista). Since the new
> computer has all different hardware, what can I expect if I try to
> boot from my 'old' XP HD? I'm assuming 1 of 2 things is going to
> happen: either it will boot up and I'll need to download some drivers
> to get the computer 100% OR it'll prompt me for the XP boot CD...
>
>
> --
> rena03sb