Upgrade to new HD - but how to drag juicy bits from old HD TO NEW HD?

[chad]

Hey all,

I'm about to upgrade my ice age 30gb hard drive and finally install a 1/2 TB or a TB drive instead. *censored*, they're dirt cheap, I should have done it years ago but the move is the scary bit.

I'm wondering just how to go about adding a new HD, installing windows but then, how to access the old HD and drag files accross? e.g. Outlook pst files, personal files etc... is there a way to run both drives simultaneously and just install a new copy of Windows from disc, etc, then drag all the goodies over? There will be about 2-4 Gb of stuff to move. And I ask this in case once I install the new drive, if I discover I do need one more specific file from the old drive, how do I access it? Otherwise I could copy all these files to a flash and use that.

I'll be on XP SP3, with an AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual 5600+, 2.0GB ram, if that is important.

Cheers!

[Allan]

Assuming your system has an open drive bay (and it probably does), just add the new drive and put the connections from the original drive on the new one and the second set of connectors on the old one. This will make the new drive the first drive the system sees. Then  boot to your OS CD and install it on the new drive. When you boot to the system you will be able to access both drives (though you may have to "take ownership" of the files on the old drive to access them:  http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308421)

[spikedfox]

If you can't connect 2 HD in your computer, get an external USB enclosure for your old drive. Bonus points for being able to easily carry this drive around with you afterwards 

[fgdn17]

check here:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/293118

and/or here:

http://support.microsoft.com/search/default.aspx?query=transfer+files&catalog=LCID%3D1033&mode=r