New hdd, will old work as a storage drive?

[Mahachippy]

Okay I have decided that I am going to get myself a raid card and a sata drive to go with my older motherboard. My question is, can I put my old win xp home hdd in an external enclosure and use it as a storage drive? Do I need to take win xp home off of it to do so or can I leave it on along with my other files and use the remaining space for storage? Thanks in advance!

[Canon]

Yes you can take the drive out of your machine and put it in an external enclosure and use it as a storage drive.

No you don't "have to" take winXP off of the dive but you might as well after you get it in the external enclosure because it will be wasting space that you could use to store your files.

If you already have files on the drive you want you don't really have to format it. You could just delete all the windows stuff (program files, windows directory etc.). If you feel like starting fresh a format will get it nice and clean so you can start loading it up.

Enjoy. Having an external HDD can come in very handy.

[Mahachippy]

Thanks Canon! The reason I am switching to sata is for the speed, but also the storage capacity. When I first got my computer three years ago, I did not know how on earth 120 gigs could be used up. Then about a month ago, I started ripping my cds and dvds to my harddrive...120 gigs was eaten up in a matter of days! So, I quit ripping stuff and have been saving up the money for a raid card and new harddrive. However, my old 120 gig is still moving along fine, so I don't want to just chunk it in the corner! You know I never have been much of a hard drive junkie, but after my experience, I now get a warm fuzzy feeling when I see servers that have multiple swappable harddrive bays! :p Anywho, enough of my rambling..thanks again!