I have acquired a second hard drive which is bigger than my current one. It is the same brand and is partitioned like the first one and formatted ready to go. How do I install Windows on it and then progressively install all my programs while still having C drive for normal use until the job is done? I'm hoping I can do it without opening up the system unit.

how you gonna install the new harddrive if you don't open the case?? its best to set the new drive to master jumper, install windows fresh on the drive, install the programs, then, set the jumper on the old drive to slave, then install it on the same ribbon cable, plug in the power cord and boot up. then, any files you may have on the old drive can be copied/pasted to the respective programs from which they were wriiten

If you want to have Win98 on both harddrives & be able to boot from either one, you'll have to use a boot manager. The problem here though, is that the unbooted partition won't be able to be accessed from the booted one, so you won't be able to copy any files from it. If you want to do a clean install of Windows on the new HD, then copy & paste the data from the old HD onto the new one (but not be able to boot from both harddrives), unplug the ribbon cable from your old HD & install the new HD as primary master. Install Windows, then plug your old HD back in, changing it to either primary slave or secondary master. When you reboot, you will be booting from the new HD, but with access to the old HD. Then just copy & paste the data. Note that you can't just copy most apps though...Apps need to be installed, rather than just copied. If you want to copy the old harddrive entirely onto the new HD (clone it) use xxcopy (freeware). I used xxcopy for this just a couple of weeks ago & it performed flawlessly (and quickly). HTH Dave

Hi Just go into your bios & change the boot menu to boot from hd02 instead of hd01. A lot easier. Just do this whenever you want ot boot from either of your drives.

If you are satisfied with the way your present installation of Windows is running, why not just copy/clone it to the second drive. The two softs I have done this with are Partition Commander and Norton Ghost. You should also be able to do it with utilites from the HDD mfr's web site. Then you will have your primary (bootable) OS installed on both master and slave drives. As Grimples said, all one needs to do is change the selected drive in BIOS to switch drives. A 30 second process. Both OS's must be installed on the first primary partition of each drive. Regards - Ray