Can I do this?

Old drive is Western Digital Protege WD 400 enhanced IDE drive. Drive in new computer is WD 3200JS, SATA I believe. I need to use a smaller capacity drive in the new computer, and I have this old drive from my junked e-machines.

I have the default recovery DVDs I made with the new computer and a drive image I made with Acronis after I deleted the new computer garbage and installed my applications. I know these work, because I had to wipe the drive clean after attempting to use Ghost 2003 and locking the computer up solid.

I searched on this and found something talking about installing partitions instead of whole drive image, but thats a bit beyond my comprehension. Maybe soeone can walk me through this if it can be done? Thanks!

Number of points here. First off, why do you feel you need to use a smaller harddrive in the new machine?

Second point. Attempting to use the OS from an Emachines isn't going to work. This is by design. MSoft sells very limited licenses to OEM vendors to pre-install. This installation of Windows will only run on that machine or one with VERY similiar hardware. The new computer is not very similiar hardware.

You need to buy a full version of WinP to install to the new computer. You should also have a floppy drive so you can install the SATA drivers before installation. Those drivers will allow the SATA II drive to run at design speed.

Thanks for your reply. I guess I wasn't very clear.

First point: "just because"

Second point: Right.

Third point: The old EIDE drive was wiped by putting it in an external enclosure and running "eraser" on it. It is an Enhanced IDE type drive, I guess; thats what it says on the drive.

The operating system is on the HD image I made with Acronis as far as I know.

Anybody have any other suggestions? Thanks!