On 8/21/2012 6:54 PM, Jacob Smith wrote:
> Sorry ...   the hard drive is from a desktop and I intend
> to insert it into another desktop as a secondary drive, and a way to have
> all the files in one place. They are both SCSI drives with Windows XP on
> them.
>
> On Tue, Aug 21, 2012 at 3:22 PM, Jacob Smith <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> Is there a way that I can put a hard drive into a new pc without it being
>> bootable and wihtout loosing data?

It depends on what you want to do.

If you want to run programs that are on the old drive and have made 
changes to things such as the registry, then you will have to boot into 
the old drive, so that you can run the operating system off of that drive.

If you just want data from the old drive, you can delete everything else 
on it to clear up space and not confuse the Windows loader.

If you have two bootable drives on the same computer (I'm not sure about 
this answer, since I've never used the dual booting capability), then it 
is possible that each time you boot up the computer, it will ask you 
which drive you want to run Windows from, and you'll have to check to see.

If you want to  run programs from either drive, you should search for 
dual booting.  Many people like to do it, say, for booting Windows or Linux.

Here, the term "boot" does not mean "boot the computer," but "boot into 
Windows."

HTH

Dean

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