Using second harddrive for reinstall backup?

[ninjazx2r]

Hey Everyone,

I am new to DaniWeb, but I figured I could get some help here. I have been searching around and have not been able to find an answer to my question. I like to think I have a decent knowledge of computers / hardware / Os's, but one thing has always stumped me.

Lets say my system has two SATA Hardrives. One is a Seagate Barracuda, 500GB that holds my Operating System (Win xp Home,SP3, NTFS C: ), and I have a second SATA hardrive, (WD 250GB, NTFS, drive letter O: ) that is simply used for backup my documents, pictures, music ect.

Lets say I want to reformat my OS HD, and install XP professional. I have backed up everything I would like to keep on my second WD hardive. After I install XP Pro, will it recognize my backup HD? Will I just be able to pull information from It like before? Or will Windows not recognize that second hardrive?

So essentially I would like to use that second hardrive to backup my data, reinstall XP on the OS HDD, then pull my documents backk off that other HDD to copy back to the OS hardrive.

Can I do that? Is it possible? Will it just show right up in the Disk Management page after re-installation?

Thanks for any and all help. I appreciate it.

[caperjack]

It sure will!

[EricKirore]

just reformat the OS drive and install the OS you wud prefer on same drive.You definately not lose any data on the 2nd drive and it will be visible on the 'new' OS.

[ninjazx2r]

Thanks for the quick replies! I appreciate it. Great Community.

:icon_mrgreen:

[caperjack]

Thanks for the quick replies! I appreciate it. Great Community.

:icon_mrgreen:

as a beginner one thing i always did just to be safe ,unplug the data storage drive so as to not get confused when formatting and format the wrong one ,then just plug it back in when finished reloading windows