Hard Drive Question.

I am currently on a 500gb drive, with XP MCE on it, and I am installing Vista on my Second Hard Drive, I want to be able to at least access some files on the 500gb drive, since I am making the Vista Drive, my main drive. I dont want to have to format the 500gb.







Any suggestions?





Thanks.

1) Shut down your computer and unplug the 500GB drive, leaving the other drive plugged in.
2) Reboot and run the Vista setup on the second drive.
3) Once that is done, shutdown and reconnect the 500GB drive.
4) Boot into your BIOS and set the drive containing Vista as the first boot device.

You will be able to access files on the 500GB drive through Vista, and also be able to access the Vista files through MCE.

Awesome.

Any chance the 500gb can fail and format?

Thanks.

There's always a chance any drive can fail. The most common advice that many forget often is frequent backups of anything important. That's one reason for a dvd burner here for the creation of data disks. Plus I have XP and Vista on two separate drives as stand alone rather then in a dual boot configuration.

No reformat would occur if simply installing the new version while that would see files and a boot folder added to the first drive with Vista becoming the default OS with the option to boot XP seen at startup. With a dual boot the XP drive would still be the default drive set even with Vista on the second since the boot information would be placed there.

NTFS 5.0 is still used in Vista as it is in XP and even with Windows 2000. The next version might likely see a possible change there however. You have to decide now if you want a dual boot or stand alone type installation. Many boards see an F8 menu before Windows even loads to choose the one session only device like floppy, optical, or one of the hard drives installed to boot up with. Once restarted the default drive will still load acording to the bios settings.

Thanks.

One thing to remember about browsing the Vista drive once that is up and running is that you will see a few changes. The DocumentsandSettings folder is now unaccessible seeing a new users folder where you will find all account information in there. Vista also puts a new boot folder on the drive.

That boot folder was fun trying to remove when dual booting RC1 and later removing it. Even when seeing the finished version of Vista installed the access denied error was seen when trying to remove that folder while in Vista and that was stand alone. I could heve used a live Linux distro but planned on reformatting anyways.

Some XP files will also be off limts mainly system related when booting into Vista as well. Each version of Windows has it's own security there. Just remember to unplug the XP drive if you don't want Vista adding anythere and being a totally separate stand alone OS. The Windows installer always looks for the first drive detected to copy files there.

Alright.

I made my First Boot Device my CD-Rom, Second Hard Drive *Vista*, Third Hard Drive *XP*.



I booted up Vista, saw my XP Hard Drive, got to the drive, tried accessing my User Account, and it said I didn't have permission.





Any ideas?









Thanks.

With both versions here and to save any hassles the Vista drive is set as first with all others disabled. That forces the boot up from the ide drive used for that. With the F8 boot device menu option at the first post screen I can then select floppy, either the Vista or XP drive even the second sata used for storage, or one of the optical drives.

If you have that available you simply set the default boot device as hard drive and set the drive you want to see according to OS at the top of the HDs listed. Without a dual boot configuration where one drive has all boot information as the host drive you set which one will be default.

For ready access of XP's DocumentsandSettings>user name sub folders I never quite run into that one. For booting into XP and trying to open the same named folder in Vista that is off limits due to the new User folder seen there. The screen shot here will show how easy it is to browse the XP drive when your account has full administrative privileges.

Hm, alright.

I turned off UAC on Vista, and had the same problem accessing folders, music, video files and stuff.


Its saying I dont have permission, and I have to go to the security tab.

And this is being seen while running Vista not XP? Here I have ready access to the DocumentsandSettings folder on the XP drive while in XP or in Vista the Vista version with the same name is off limits. The users folder replaces that in the new version.

What you are seeing in the image posted earlier is browsing the XP folder while in Vista with complete access seen there for going into the first PC eye as well as those seeing a large number on the end added to it. The next thumbnail will show more folders below on that.

You may have to create a totally new admin account in order to be able to have ready access if you are unable to assign new permissions to the present user account created when installing Windows. By default however only certain files on the XP drive will see the access denied error being more or less protected system files. First have a look at the screen shot here to get an idea of having ready access while in Vista.



One free tool found is called TakeOwnership that adds a feature to the right click menu when clicking any non vital file or folder. First look over the information on the need for adminstrative access as seen at http://www.petri.co.il/add-take-owne...menu-vista.htm

The free Take Ownership zip file is found along with the blog on that at http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windo...menu-in-vista/

Surprisingly this same reg mod will also work quite well in XP as well as Vista pointing that as something someone found earlier and discovered also worked in the new version as well. The last option if nothing works would be manually moving files from their present locations while running XP and seeing them go into new folders outside of any created when installing Windows or by a software installer.

That makes them totally free to access regardless of which version or even Linux you happen to be running. The live Linux distros can also be great tools for data rescue when you lose access to any MS drive/partition.