Build Advice Can these HD be used in my pc?

I have 2 old Western Digital WD1200 ATA Hard drive from my old system which had a Asus P5n-e sli mobo

I was curious If I would be able to put them in my new system which has a Asus P5N-E SLI mobo

Also From what I recall the 2 hard drives are running xp but my current sytem is windows vista home prem 64

Thanks

 

Your Question is Ambiguous, you are moving from a P5N-E? or to a P5N-E?
Either way there should be no reason why you cant plug them in, open ports providing.
wont necessarily be able to boot of the xp drive but a repair install could get it going.
if you could just clarify / expand on your question? (although i think the answer is yes)

 

bah sorry, typo, I meant to say they came from a system that had a gigabyte K8NSNXP -939 mobo

was just curious if they would be compatiable with my new sytem and also the best way to get them working since I run vista but they have xp on them

or could I have hem set up as a dual boot maybe?

 

Yes you can you will need to format the drives first though before you can use them as storage.
You can not dual boot xp and vista from 2 seperate drives.

*thinks* at least i'm pretty sure you can't.

 

oh ok thank

so how would it be best to go about this, would I just hook them up and then format or disconnect my main drive first then add the other 2 and format etc

sorry for the questions, never attempted this before as you can see

 

You can just hook them right up to your system as it is and format them then.

 

great, thanks for the help

 

You can do that absolutely fine.

Any reasons why it wouldn't be possible?

 

I boot Windows Vista from one drive, and 7 from the other. Before that, I had XP on one drive and Vista on the other - so yes you can.

 

In a "dual boot" scenario or are you changing the first boot device in bios every time?

 

nope the boot.ini file with in the primary OS will contain what you could call a shortcut to the other drive, allowing any other OS's on the system to be accessed.

You can install an OS anywhere, and then redirect the boot.ini to it.

 

Thanks, i was not entirely sure when i answered that one. (made that clear though)