When a hard drive is physically removed from a computer, does the data stay intact? (I presume it does.) If I reinstall it at a later date, will everything still be there? It seems to me I tried this a long time ago and I lost all of my data. I am running Win XP Pro. My computer has physical 3 hard drives and I want to do some “rearranging” of data and maybe setup for a dual boot with Win98. Pulling out one of the drives may make it easier. It will eventually go back in, though. Thanks.

As long as you don't place the drive near anything with a magnetic field (e.g., adjacent to a TV or monitor screen, loudspeakers, an electric motor, etc.), and don't accidentally zap it with a spark of static electricity, your data should remain intact. The only issue would be the ability of the OS to access the drive once you replace it, if, in the interim, you've changed the settings for master / slave, or the primary or secondary drive in your system's BIOS. Assuming you return everything to exactly the way it was, your data should be fine.

As jeff says, if you remove the hard drive and keep it well away rom any magnetic force and do NOT cheange any settings in your Windows XP you will be fine. Why would you want to remove it anyway? do you have a cd burner? if so why not back up all you need onto a cd and re-install it if anything does go wrong! Good luck Let us know! Matt