[pizzaboy]

Any help that could be provided would be greatly appreciated.

I have two computers that each have strong attributes and could make a good computer if combined. However, unfortunately there are also problems with both. What I want to do is take the hard drive from one of them and make it the master in the other computer. At the same time, I would change the existing hard drive to a slave, but do not really know how to do this. There are only three options on this hard drive (Master, Cable Select, and Park). I'm not sure which to make this in order to make it the slave.

Also, I am somewhat confused as to what I need to do to prepare that drive to be a slave. Do I need to format the drive? Ideally, I would prefer not to do this, because I would like to keep the files that are on the drive. Also, will it be a problem that this drive is running on XP and the other that I will be using as the master is running on 2000? I would prefer to maintain the 2000 software.

One last question. Since the hard drive that will be the new Master does not currently have the same drivers as the existing computer, do I need to reload all of the drivers for the existing hardware?

Thank you for your help.

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Curious, why would you want to make the 2000, you main computer, if so, are you thinking of using the xp drive for data to which it would be better formatted to give you more space, also what is the size of the harddrives, oh and what about just putting the secound harddrive in an external harddrive box, or are your thinking of some kind of dual boot, anyway there are a lot of options here so more into please.

[fleamailman]

Curious, why would you want to make the 2000, you main computer, if so, are you thinking of using the xp drive for data to which it would be better formatted to give you more space, also what is the size of the harddrives, oh and what about just putting the secound harddrive in an external harddrive box, or are your thinking of some kind of dual boot, anyway there are a lot of options here so more into please.

[pizzaboy]

Both drives are 20 GB. The 2000 drive has the virus software and the operating system works properly. Unfortunately with the XP drive, the XP system was loaded in an attempt to fix problems with the previously loaded 2000 software. It became infected, and lost the ability to connect to the internet. On some poor advice, I was told that I could load, but not activate XP, and then revert to the old operating system. Of course, this didn't work, so now I am stuck with XP that cannot be activated since it matches with another computer. In the interest of not having to purchase a new operating system and new virus software, I was simply going to use the current XP hard drive as additional storage. However, I would be open to suggestions if there would be a way to get the XP drive back up and running.

As far as your question about using a dual boot or external hard drive, I do not really know what you are getting at, but I figured since there is an extra bay in the PC, I would just add it internally. I expected the computer would run off of the 2000 hard drive with the other as a backup and storage.