2 replies to this topic

[Viet Vet]

Good Morning All;

A while ago a Homebuilt XP Pro box with a Asus Mother began to "Blue Screen"; as it turned out it was the Mother board which unfortunately was out of warranty. In shooting the BOD issue I began swapping parts, video card, memory, DVD burner etc; you all know the drill. The Box now has been relegated to spare parts (power supply, cables etc.) One of the byproducts of all this is an almost new 500 Gig Sata HD with a failed Windows XP Pro Installation on it. When I was troubleshooting the BOD I put in a new 500 gig HD in and attempted to reinstall my OEM copy of Windows XP PRO; during the install the PC BOD and the install failed. I tried it a second time with the same result.

As a result of this I picked up a HP Vista (64 bit) box. I would like to use this extra HD for storage of videos of my grandchildren. If this was a new/ virgin HD I wound not think twice about adding it to the Vista box.

My question is will I have any difficulty adding it to vista with the failed XP PRO OS on it and should I be able to format it using "Disk Management" in Vista.

Thank You
VV

[rokytnji]

As long as the Vista Hardrive is set to boot first in bios, you should be able to bring up the XP drive in Disk Management. Delete the partition. Then Format it as NTFS to wipe it clean. Me being a Linux user, I use Gparted Live ISO CD or Parted Magic Live Iso CD to accomplish what you are trying to do. Parted Magic comes with a ton of features. Browser, Gparted is in the iso also, you can use it like Acronis also. It is open source and Free to download and burn a Iso Image cd using ImgBurn for Windows Visa. But Disk Management will fit your needs also, or it should. I keep live cds like the above like a mechanic keeps a wrench in his toolbox. They are free and work like Disk Manager once you learn the steps on how to operate them. Like any software in Windows like Nero.

[Viet Vet]

rokytnji, on 19 July 2009 - 05:02 PM, said:

As long as the Vista Hardrive is set to boot first in bios, you should be able to bring up the XP drive in Disk Management. Delete the partition. Then Format it as NTFS to wipe it clean. Me being a Linux user, I use Gparted Live ISO CD or Parted Magic Live Iso CD to accomplish what you are trying to do. Parted Magic comes with a ton of features. Browser, Gparted is in the iso also, you can use it like Acronis also. It is open source and Free to download and burn a Iso Image cd using ImgBurn for Windows Visa. But Disk Management will fit your needs also, or it should. I keep live cds like the above like a mechanic keeps a wrench in his toolbox. They are free and work like Disk Manager once you learn the steps on how to operate them. Like any software in Windows like Nero.

Thank You rokytnji;

For the info; I will be adding it to the new HP box when I get back from Vacation. I was more concerned that the corrupted XP Pro install would either prevent detection or hinder the boot process. Apparently that will not be an issue so thank you again.

VV