Hi, I wish to remove windows 98 from a hard drive, and then attach that hard drive to my new computer as a second one. I am familiar with computer hardware, so attaching the HD shouldn't be a problem. I was wondering how to remove windows 98 from this hard drive (I think the data is corrupt, but I want to salvage what I can). I was wondering what I would have to do to do this, and would I need to set my hardrives to master/slave (or primary/slave)? Also, how would I do this? Thanks. BTW, I'm running winxp, so if it has anything built in that would help me, that would be helpful.

Simple to remove Windows 98. Just reformat the hard drive once its installed. Yes, you'll need to set the jumpers on the hard drives to Salve and Master. Sometimes there's a sticker on the drive itself showing the jumper settings. Otherwise you can almost always find the info on the drive makers' websites. Since you have corrupt data on the hard drive, be sure and do a thorough suface scan of the drive. If you have bad sectors, you probably don't want to trust it for data storage. Best Wishes, Bob

You don't need to do anything more than installing it in your machine as the slave device on the primary channel. You will need to make sure the jumpers are set so that the XP HD is set for Master, and the old 98 drive is set for slave. Some HD's need no jumper at all to be the master when no slave is present, but they do need a jumper set to the master position if there is a slave HD present. The slave HD will always need to have the jumpers set to the slave position. Look at the drives carefully, it should show you how to do it. Also, connect the Primary Master (XP) drive on the end of the IDE cable and the slave on the middle connector. At that point you can go to the "D" drive, which will be the old 98 HD, and salvage what you want off of it, and then format it if you so choose. Post back let us know how you make out.

If the Windows98 PC has a CD-RW and the system is good enough to Burn , then you can backup the uncorrupt personal data to a CD-R or CD-RW disc. If the Drive is not infected with a Virus/Worm or other 'vermin' you can connect it to the Windows XP running PC as a Primary Slave [change the Jumper cap from its current Master to a Slave postion]or Secondary Master [leave the Jumper setting intact but connect to the Master connector of Secondary Channel IDE cable]. Enter the BIOS Setup and make sure the Secondary Master is set to AUTO and the newly connnected HDD is recognized and then Save and Exit. Using the Windows XP you can Format the Disk to NTFS filing System and use it for storage. This is done, as you may be already familiar, by clicking on the Drive in My Computer> File>Format.

If you attach the second HDD to the primary IDE controller make sure that the jumpers on the HDD are set to slave. If you are going to put it on the secondary IDE controller then how you set the jumpers depends on what you have on the secondary already. When your system boots watch the screen as the drives are detected. This will tell you what is where. Make note of it. Most HDD's will show the jumper settings on the HDD itself. Once the HDD is on the new system WinXP will see it and you will be able to access any uncorrupted data on the drive. WinXP may also ask you upon boot up if you want to have a dual boot system. Say no. Once you have salvaged all your data WinXP may have a utility that will allow you to convert the FAT on the second HDD to NTFS without losing your data. Or you can format it and WinXp will set the FAT to NTFS as it formats.

Did the same thing myself last year to transfer DATA and JPEG files to my new XP PC Afterwards I did a Format and left it as a FAT32 DATA Drive. That way I can recover DATA in the event of a Harddisk/OS failure with a DOS Bootdisk. (I used to mistrust XP!) Now all my programs save DATA to Drive D:\ and NTFS Drive C: is left for Programs and Projects. Its as simple as they say. Change Pins on Drives to Master & Slave.

Ok, thanks. However, is it possible for me to remove win98 from the drive, but leave the rest of the data intact?