I just bought a new computer and was just wondering if I transfered the hard drive out of this computer to the new one will it affect the partitions at all. I got lots of files on the second partition that total 80gb and i was just going to reformat partition 1 and reinstall windows and leave partition 2 alone & keep the data. So will the new computer mess up the partitions sizes or will they be ok.

Why not just leave the harddrive that came with the new computer as the boot disk with the OS on it. You can install the old drive and re-label the partitions with any letters you choose, except for C: of course. Installing Windows on the old drive has no advantages and will cause problems.

If it was for me, I would install the old HD as slave drive in the new PC and then take ownership of it in order to be able to copy files. Then I will use XP Disk Manager to format the old hd. i_XpUser

"You can install the old drive and re-label the partitions with any letters you choose, except for C: of course. " True, but you can only change the drive letters to ones that aren't already being used. Sometimes you have to temporarily assign a different drive letter than what you want for a drive so that you can shuffle available drive letters, then change the drive letter again to the one you want to use after that. You can do all that in one session. Control Panel - Administrative Tools - Computer Management - Disk Management - RIGHT click on the drive you want to change the drive letter of - Change Drive Letter and Paths.