[Gbytes]

Hi,

I recently took out the hard drive(Barracuda 7200.7 Seagate 120GB) of an old computer of mine, which have the OS XP professional on it. I wanted to put it in another computer that has Window Vista. I never did that before, so I wanted to know if the steps I’m taking are correct and if I’m missing something. All I have to do is zero-write the hard drive, take the jumper off(which put it in slave mode), plug the ATA cable and the power cable, boot it and format it by right-clicking on the hard drive and select “format” and I'm good to go? Nothing to do with the BIOS or anything?

2. Also, for erasing everything in the hard-drive before doing anything, should I use “Active@ Kill Disk - Hard Drive Eraser” or “Seatools”?

3. Furthermore, how do I retrieve the key that I had with the XP professional, since the computer was pre-installed along with the OS?

Thanks

[Elvandil]

No need to "wipe" it. That will only cause needless wear and tear (and possibly ruin it). If you want it empty, remove the partitions and make new ones. That's a good idea, anyway. Then format as you want.

The main drive on that cable may need its jumper changed, too. Some drives have a separate jumper setting for master-with-slave than for master-alone.

Just hook it up with the jumpers set correctly and access it in Disk Management for paritioning and formatting. BIOS should be fine.

The only difference between a "master" and a "slave" is where it is connected on the cable. A slave drive can be your main system drive with your operating system on it, too.

[Gbytes]

Is there a difference between removing the partitions and using the Disk Management and right-clicking the hard drive and "format"? I mean, should I only do one of them or it doesn't matter if I do the both of them?

Also, since the hard drive have been used on another computer for a good few years, do I need to check for bad sectors only using the one in vista?

And before I do anything, is it possible to find the key that is used to activate this XP(pre-isntalled), if I ever wanted to reinstall it?

[Gbytes]

[Elvandil]

Formatting just means that you create a file system on the drive. But the larger divisions of the drive, its partitions, will be unchanged. You'd be better off removing the partitions first, creating new ones as you like, and then formatting those partitions. If the current ones are faulty, you may not find out until you lose access to your files.

The only difference between a master and slave drive is how it is connected. A slave can be the system and boot drive, too. All you need to do to change one to the other is change jumpers.

SATA has no master/slave setting because each drive has its own connector.

Some partition types cannot be seen by Disk Management in Windows.

Parted Magic disk partitoning tool (Bootable CD image)

[Gbytes]

I successfully installed the old hard drive and removed the old partitions to make new ones.
But as for:"If the current ones are faulty, you may not find out until you lose access to your files."
Isn't there a tool I can use to mark out the bad sectors, so nothing will be written on them?

[Elvandil]

Chkdsk /r will mark bad sectors. But if you have any, it is best to toss the drive. They will increase in number and the drive will most likely fail, causing all its contents to be lost.

[Gbytes]

Ok, so I did a Chkdsk /r and nothing seemed to be found, I think its still alright to go with it for a year or so, thanks for the help! =)

[Elvandil]

Just don't trust it with the only copy of any files. But you shouldn't do that, anyway, even with brand-new drives since they can fail at any time.

Always have backups.

Have fun.