I have a new HDD for my old computer (PCI bus, IDE drives) as disaster prevention. I am afraid of critical info loss if the old drive crashes. The old drive is from 2001 and may be at or above its MTBF. My OS was originally Win ME, upgraded steadily to Win XP and currently at to XP SP3. Consequently, it is not a clean OS to install. I do not have a WinXP standalone CD, just upgrade licenses. I would like to migrate the OS to the new drive. I am concerned I will get into some limbo position where there is a conflict or neither drive will boot. Advice from experts would be appreciated. I have a software package from Spotmau that claims to handle such a drive-to-drive migration, but I am still cautious. Once operating successfully, I will move desired and precious content to the new drive, and leave behind the accumulated drivel of nearly 8 years in its comfortable old home. Thinking is good.

The new drive should come with cloning software that will allow you to copy the current drive to the new one. "So won’t you give this man his wings What a shame To have to beg you to see We’re not all the same What a shame" - Shinedown

If you want to perform a clean install then what you need is a qualifying upgrade disk. When you start installing WinXP with your upgrade disk you will be asked for proof of ownership of a qualifying OS. Simply insert the ME disk and point to the source. That should do it for you.

there is software that would allow you to clone/copy your current OS HDD and push that to the newer HDD. However, this would copy the OS exactly as is. If you are worried about the integrity of OS system files due to 8 years of upgrading, though, this may not be your desired course of action: Copy the drive as is and it will copy everything - corrupted system files and DLLs, broken SIDs, sloppy permission settings, and a sea of orphaned registry entries. Make sure that's what you want, otherwise I would suggest a fresh install of the OS - even if you have to go through a few upgrades, a fresh install immediately followed by OS upgrades will be way cleaner than an 8 year old install. A fresh install will generally result in faster performance, and often greater stability as well.

You don't need to INSTALL any of the older OSes. Just present a disk as proof of ownership of the previous qualifying OS.