Swapping HDDs with WXP

[walter4h]

Hi, guys:
I have arranged to make DVD for one acquaintance, I took the tapes from him, with a promise to return them in two days. But then something came up, I would not be able to work on that project for another 2-3 weeks, at least.
I have 40G main HDD and 80G slave, which I use for video work. I also have a spare 80G HDD.
Can I capture his tapes on HDD, which is currently on my computer, then take it out, put another one in and use it for my normal work? And then, when I have time to resume on those DVDs, I swap them again, encode those materials and author the DVDs?
The reason I am not sure it would work is because my Windows XP may think it is a new system and refuse to work.
Thx: walter

[ViRaL1]

Are you swapping out the OS drive or the storage drive?

[joecav]

Obviously you cannot swap out the HD that has your OS on it (C: probably), if you did, how would you boot, right?

If you capture the video to the slave or secondary HD that does NOT have your OS, you can swap it out and give it to your friend or whatever. They can put that HD in their PC as a slave and will be able to access the data that lives there. When he/she is done with it, just put it back in your PC and you're good to go.

Whatever you do, capture it to a different physical HD, not a different partition that's physically on the same disk as your OS.

[rallynavvie]

Depending on how your motherboard's BIOS detects hard drives you may have to go into BIOS and set up boot priority again. I've had this happen even when using swap trays on the secondary IDE channel.

[walter4h]

Many thanks for your help, guys:
I am taking a summer semester, I had an exam today and another one two days ago, that's why I was unable to acknowledge your response earlier.
Yes, I capture video on another HDD, there is no OS there, it is configured as a slave.
Now I am more confident about swapping it.
thanks again! walter