Thread: How to install SATA hard drive

I have a new computer arriving soon with a 640GB SATA hard drive running Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit, I want to move my other 250GB SATA hard drive running Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit from my dead computer to the new computer to transfer data. My question is after I install the old hard drive to the new computer, how do I set the old drive as the slave and the new one as the master? If I turn on the computer and go straight to windows, would it automatically set each of them to master and slave, and would it cause problems if I don't boot from one of them and just let it choose by itself? Would both drives appear on My Computer so that I can drag and transfer files?

There's no such thing as "master" and "slave" with SATA as there was with IDE drives. Each motherboard connector can connect only one drive. Perhaps you're asking about how to control which drive the system boots from? That's normally a BIOS setting.

If I were you, I'd install the OS on your new computer and new drive (if not already installed) without connecting the old drive at all. Once you've done that, shut it down, install the old drive and then reboot - it will appear as a data drive and you should be able to access your old files. You may need to use an administrative account to take ownership of the old files and change their permissions if they have security applied to them.