adding a second pre used hard drive

[shadowrelm]

My main computer recently bit the big one so I have been forced to go and use an older one untill i have the cash to rebuild. the system I am using now has a 40g drive in it and the one I had was using a 400g. how do I install the 400 into the second mashine when both drives have windows xp on them? I don't want to wipe the 400 or the 40 for that matter since both have stuff I want to keep. When I plug the 400 in, the computer will not boot since it doesn't know what drive to load from. what can I do?

 

[Ste]

whats the connection on the 400 GB one?

 

[shadowrelm]

just a standard Pata drive. connecting it as a slave drive to the greay slave connector on my ribbon.

 

[Ethan_Kaizer]

I might be wrong here, but once you plug in the second (the 400gb) drive, and you set it as a slave, it shouldn't read that OS then, right?