I'll try and keep this as short as possible, any help and guidance would be greatly appreciated :) I've bought a new and more powerful PC but I desperately want to keep a substancial amount of files(mostly wav files/songs recorded via Cubase) so that I can still access them on the new system. The guy at the shop we bought it(who sounded pretty knowledgeable) said all we have to do is remove our hard drive from the old system and when we go to pick up the new one a tech guy will place the old hard drive into the new system.

Is it really that simple? Our old system's OS is Windows 98 SE and the new one will be Windows XP Home. I'm a little confused as to how this will work. I'm a little on the naive side when it comes to computers but I'm smart enough to know you can't have two OS's on the same system, so will the files from the old system just nicely fit into the new Windows XP one? Maybe the guy is gonna do any extra legwork necessary to convert the HD or whatever, I don't know but I really wanted to ask here. Above all it would be catastrophic if I lost the files from the old system so that's why I am a little on the paranoid side.

Finally, I'm not completely sure how to remove the hard drive from our old system - I've tried looking it up but without much luck, if somebody could possibly post the steps needed I would be extremely grateful indeed.

Many thanks. :)

Ususally There are 5 steps to remove a hard drive.

1) Power offf system and unplug from outlet.

2) Remove case cover

3) Unplug the ribbon and power cables from hard drive

4) Remove the 2-4 screws holding drive in case

5) Slide drive out.

If this is too complicated, I'm sure the ship will do it for you of you take the old system to them.

Before doing anything, if the old system has a CD burner installed, then back up all critical files.
This insures that the files are saved in case the old HD gets knackered during the transfer from the old system to the new one.

The old HD can be installed as Slave in the new system with an O/S on it, and the system will boot from the new HD.
The old HD will have to be re-jumpered as Slave(it's probably Master currently), and it's recommended to connect it to the IDE 1 cable along with the new HD.
If the new HD is an SATA drive, then the old HD should be connected as Master to the IDE 1 channel. Plus, BIOS may have to be reconfigured so the SATA drive remains as the boot drive.
If you want the old HD to also be bootable, then you should be able to edit the boot.ini file in Windows XP to do this.

To remove the old HD, shut down the system, remove the power cord, disconnect the cables from the back of the HD, remove the screws holding it in the case, and slide it out.
<<Edit>>
classicsoftware,
You beat me to the punch on the HD removal instructions.

Thanks for your informative replies guys :) I'm a little worried about losing files if something goes wrong - what are the chances of this happening? Is it imperative that I back up the critical files? The files that I do consider critical(songs and Audio wav files recorded in Cubase) are like 16GB worth and it seems like it'd be a real headache to put them all on CD's which I think is my only backup option. When the old HD is in the new one as the slave, will it just operate as it did with Windows 98 but will be with Windows XP? Sorry for the dumb questions but losing these files would be nothing short of catastrophic :eek:

These files are obviously very important to you. Bear in mind that having them where they are now is inherently insecure in any case. At 30-40 cents a CDR you are only talking approx $15 to have them all safe (and an hour or two of burning with a modern burner) regardless of whether something goes wrong when transferring the drive or whether you should get a virus or an electromechanical failure of the hdd at any time. If you have the capability to network the old and the new pcs then you could copy the files over to the new system first - then move the hdd and use it as a backup drive on the new pc.

Slaving the drive to the new PC should be straightforward and unproblematic but having said that accidents do and will happen and HDDs don't intrinsically like being moved around and are subject to damage from any shocks (mechanical and electrical).

It's your call; only you know how valuable your data is to you.

If you are real careful removing the HD and transporting it to the supplier(HD's do not like to be jarred), and the supplier is real careful installing it in the new system, then it should be ok.
But I'm sure that you have heard of Murphy's Law, and how it always seems to come into play when you want things to go smoothly.
Plus, I've read too many times about HD's completely failing when they're moved around.
So it's highly recommended to back up all files that you do not want to lose.

Your old HD will essentially be a storage drive in the new system, and you should be able to access it from the new HD.
And if you ever decide to make the old HD into a bootable drive, then you should be also be able to access the new HD from the old HD as long as the new HD was formatted with an FAT 32 file system.
But if the new HD was formatted with NTFS, which is a more stable and secure file system, then you will not be able to access it from the old HD, since FAT cannot access NTFS.

since FAT cannot access NTFS
Not strictly true. DOS-based OSes cannot directly access NTFS but Win2K/XP/etc can directly access NTFS whether they are installed on FAT or on NTFS themselves.

Actually, I was aware of that, and had intended to type 'Win 98 FAT cannot access NTFS', but got distracted when composing of the last part of the post, and the 'Win 98' part unfortunately never got typed in.

However, in the context of this string, I'm sure that Humbucker now understands the possible shortcomings of his old HD's file system wrt the new HD in spite of my oversight.

Humbucker,
Burning CDR's with a cd burner have been mentioned so far as a good backup plan. But better still would be to buy a DVD burner and with 4- 4.7 gig DVDR's you could back up the entire 16 gigs of mp3's etc.

DVD burners usually also do CD's as well so you always have the option of using less expensive disks too and they will more likely play in cd players for when you want to.

As mentioned above, you are risking a lot if you are relying on harddrive disks alone to store your musical repetoire. Even cd's and DVD's don't last forever. Multiple copies is the best way to go with periodic renewal copies.

Sooo, get on the stick and git yerself a burner :p It's not difficult to install nor operate. If you can handle the music software, you can definitely learn to burn cd's and dvd's.
___________-
Paul,
I can get cd's occasionally for HALF what you mention (STILL sitting on a sizeable cache of 19 cents per blank cdr :cool: ). AAMOF I think I can match your price estimate for dvd+r's!

FTT we are still inclined to forget how cheap things are in comparison on the other side of the pond. :mad:

There are only two kinds of computer users.


Those that have experienced hard disk failure
and
Those that are going to.



BACKUP - BACKUP - BACKUP - BACKUP