External harddrive used for transfer between desktops

Question

I have a D8200 with an external 80g harddrive used for backing up the internal harddrive.   I have ordered a new D8400.  Can I use the backup in the external harddrive to transfer to the new desktop?  Both the 8200 and 8400 have WindowsXP.   Thanks!   Dimension 8200 512 RDRAM 1.8GHz 40GB NEC-NR-7900A (CDRW) Sony DVD RW DW-U10A Iomega HDD 80GB USB 2.0 NVidia GeForce FX5500 256MB DDR IEEE 1394 (Firewire) USB 2.0 WindowsXP

rickmktg · Answer

@beneteau wrote:

I have a D8200 with an external 80g harddrive used for backing up the internal harddrive.

I have ordered a new D8400. Can I use the backup in the external harddrive to transfer to the new desktop? Both the 8200 and 8400 have WindowsXP.

Nope. Different bios, different setup, SATA drives on the 8400, ...

You need to reinstall programs on the new machine and then copy data over if you want.

noobody · Answer

Are you transferring data or a 'mirror' of your 8200 drive? If you are just transferring data, which I expect you are since you cannot mirror to a non-bootable drive as far as I know, then you should be good to go.  You cannot install/run system programs from the USB drive to the 8400 system from programs copied from the 8200 system.  They need to be installed on the 8400 system directly. but, I think you just want to use the one external drive as an external drive for both systems... and that is exactly what the USB drive is for.   :]   gl.

Storage, Drives & Media

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