Hi,

I bought a new Acer Aspire 3000 laptop with XP to go travelling with. I run my own business, so I also needed to bring my old PC HDD's (Master and Slave) with me as they have "my world" on them. I was hoping to be able to access all the programs on the old drives through the laptop and not just the data.

I went to a local shop here in Canada when I arrived on my travels and was sold a Vantec Nexstar 2 external caddy so that I could access the PC HDD via USB. I only seem to be able to access the data though and not the programs.

I would ideally like to keep both laptop operating system (with all its drivers) and my old HDD both accessible.

Thanks

Steve

Welcome to the forum Steve! :thumbs:

I am assuming the other HD doesn't have an OS on it? If it doesn't you may want to install one on it, and then do a dual-boot situation for certain programs. Or you can copy all of the files over from one of to the other, then install it on that drive from the OS.

I'm trying to think of more alternatives, but coming up short.

Thanks

Both Laptop and old HDD Master have Windows XP, and therefore dual boot may not be possible as the old HDD in the external caddy works through the USB port and I believe XP disable the USB in startup and resets it?

As far as I know it doesn't. But only the new versions of some BIOS allow the option of booting from a USB. I would look further into that option, or use the File and Settings transfer wizard (just for your programs) to transfer onto your main Windows.