New old pc

suegoo

I have a pc running vista and have bought a second hand one which has much better specs but is running xp.

My drive is sata and so is the xp machine and both 32 bit. Can I put the vista drive into the new pc and use for extra storage?
I cannot put vista on the new pc because I only have an oem disc.

Should I format the drive before removing it or let xp do it in the other pc?
Hope I haven't confused you all too much. Thanks for your thoughts.

new2012

Just replace the XP drive with the Vista drive and see what happens.

Of course back up everything first.

macman

Yes, you can install the SATA drive in the older PC as a slave drive, but you may need converters if the old one is PATA/IDE.
It really doesn't matter if you reformat before or after.

suegoo

Thanks macman.

robmar0se

If they are both Sata, then either make sure you load the old Vista drive into the right Sata socket on the motherboard - yr XP drive should be on 0 whereas the old vista one should be on 1 or above. this is to ensure you boot from the right drive as with sata you don't have master and slave as you did on pata/ide.

If unsure then format the old vista drive first.

suegoo

Thanks rob that is really useful, and something I had not even thought about.