i upgraded my mobo to a amdx64 ect...installed xp pro x64...

i couldn't wait to buy a sata drive...so i used my existing ide hard drive...ect...

now...when i get the chance to buy a sata drive....can i just clone the ide drive to the sata drive?

i have much experience cloning ide to ide and sata to sata.....but never ide to sata

is this possible?

I have done this many times. Any decent CLONING program will work. Drive Copy - TrueImage - Ghost.

I would check that the SATA disk is visible natively by XP x64 first, otherwise it might fail to boot due to a missing driver.

Boot from the XP x64 CD when you get the SATA disk connected, and see if it appears in the list of disks at the point where you choose to install the OS - if it can then you should be good to go, clone the disk and make the BIOS change to alter the boot sequence to check the SATA disk before the PATA one.

The first time it boots up there might be some switching around as the SATA controller and its devices are re-evaluated, and disk signatures are updated in the registry.

cool...thanks guys

Wrong post