greetings to all! I just bought a 500gb internal hard drive. i've been using it as a slave for a few weeks. For a couple months now my computer has been moving kind of slow when i click on links and at start up (not many programs run at start up). Also at start up it says diskette 0 failure or something and it takes about 10 minutes every time i reboot because it goes through that checking for errors things were it goes 2% 50% etc.... Anyways the guy at the cpu shop says my master drive (120gb) is about to go out and he recommended me use my new 500gb as my master. The problem is the 500gb doesn't have an OS my current master uses windows xp sp2. The guy at the shop wanted to charge me $70 to install windows xp sp2..............I bought the cpu from this place and pointed to the serial numbers/xp registration on the the side of the cpu and he said yeah you can use that but the problem is finding a windows xp sp 2 CD. So my question is.....is there any place online for me to legally download the windows xp sp2 installation cd? i already have a registered xp sp2 serial. or is there any simple free way to transfer my current xp to the slave? actually i probably don't want to transfer because the guy at the cpu shop said any files missing now or corrupeted will be corrupted on the new drive. Ok so say someone gives me a link where i can download xp sp2 online, how do I install it to drive d (the 500gb current slave) without erasing drive c. Like how do I set it up to run or copy only on drive d. I know i can make a cd and put the 500gb in as a master and run it but i don't want to take any chance, i'd rather install xp on the 500gb right now as it's a slave. i hope this post is mostly clear. thanks

Even if there were a legal way to get a copy of WinXPsp2 it wouldn't do you any good. Your COA for your Dell computer is a different version of WinXP and you wouldn't be able to register it.

You can carve out 50GB-100GB out of your 500GB for a new system partition to house your XP installation from terminally ill HDD. You will then need to clone the dying HDD & restore the image to the newly created system partition on the new disk. Good luck! P.S. .... There are many suitable utilities to facilitate the exercise, although, the highly recommended (& more reliable) ones are not going to be freeware.

"I bought the cpu from this place and pointed to the serial numbers/xp registration on the the side of the cpu" CPU (Central Priocessing Unit) is a piece of hardware, do you mean the tower ??? That said if your original drive is still working, then you can CLONE one drive to another with software like Acronis True Image........

rhanks for all the responses, when i bought my maxtor 500gb it came with a cloning cd, but the guy at the shop said he'd recommend putting a new xp on rather than cloning. So if I clone to my current slave am i risking losing all my info on that current slave. i don't know a thing about partioning. yes webs, i was referring to the a sticker on the tower case. thanks

Checkout the cd that came with the new drive, it probably has the utility on it to do what Webs mentioned. I think Seagate drive cd ships with True Image on it or a lite version of it and a help screen to walk you through it.

All cloning does is make an identical copy of your old (source) disk / partition to your new (destination) disk / partition. Once you have completed cloning you replace the old disk with the new disk. However as you are already using your 500 GB drive as a slave, I assume that you have data on it. Cloning may result in the lost of data on the slave. I say may because it depends on how you clone. I do not know how your 120 GB is currently partitioned so it is difficult to give specific advise. 1. ASSUMING that your old 120 has two equal sized partitions, with the Primary partition being used for your OS and a second partition for your data. 2. ASSUMING your new 500 GB hard drive has only 1 partition and contains your data. You will need to do the following: A. Use something like Partition Magic, (or similar) to do a NON Destructive RESIZE of the 500 GB disk and shrink it so that it is located in the SECOND HALF of the disk area. The amount you shrink it by should be equal to how big you want your OS partition to be. It should be at least as big as your current OS partition. B. CLONE your CURRENT OS partition to this newly freed space on the 500 GB disk. C. Remove your old disk and re-jumper and reconnect your new disk as the master disk. D. Boot up and you should be running XP on the new master 500 GB disk. E. Once it is all working to your satisfaction, re-jumper and re-connect your old hard drive as a slave. Reboot your system and copy any files from the second partition of your old drive (if you had one) to the second partition of your new drive. You could do this last step before you do the cloning as that may be easier. Hope it helps. ___________________________________________ ☺ When everything else fails, read the instructions.