I have a hard drive that I have been using in an external enclosure to backup data. (Obviously it has already been partitioned and formatted.) I just built a computer and would like to use this HDD as the main drive in it. When I install windows XP Pro on this HDD, will it delete the data that is already on it. If so, is there a way to install windows xp pro without deleting my data? Thanks in advance for your help!
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Want to install windows XP on drive that has data on it...
- Thread starter SKreme
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On the drive in question, is this to be a "complete" install of XP, or an upgrade? Either way, save your Outlook data (E-Backup), and "My Documents" folder. I just did an upgrade, and the Outlook data (Address Book and settings) were overwritten. With E-Backup you can restore all the Outlook settings. "My Documents" will be a new folder and your old "My Documents" will still be listed as "<your name> Documents", and you can copy them to the new folder. Everything else will be OK, except the programs that had files (dll's for instance), in windows may be gone and you will have to re-install the programs. Of course, if you re-format, ignore this - everything will be gone!
If its just got data on you should be able to install XP into the existing partition. You'll find out during the install (before you've updated anything). At the point where it askes where you want to install XP, if it's happy with the partition you have it will show on the list. If it doesn't like it for some reason it will appear as unpartitioned space or a damaged partition. In these cases, you can't install XP without formatting. Assuming its ok, XP won't delete the data on it, but if you have folders with any of the normally used XP folder names (\windows, \documents and settings, \Program files) on the drive, I'd rename them before installing.
You should of course make sure you've backed up any data from this dirve that you can't afford to lose.
You should of course make sure you've backed up any data from this dirve that you can't afford to lose.
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