I want to move 2 drives (SATA) from a dead comp. that had XP Pro as O.S. to a Win. 7 computer that has 2 SATA drives in it now and 2 more bays ready to take the SATA drives from the broken unit.. The computer that the drives are coming from had its' MB fried and it was a 32 bit sys. The new computer is a 64 bit sys..  I need to access the data on the two drives and access some files. I don't mind leaving them in the newer (Velocity) computer for TV recording storage after I get files transferered and organized.  The drives in the Velocity are both SATA. All drives in both computers were added my me. They are not "stock". The broken computer is custom job. So we can't say it is DELL's fault.

I have 2 questions:
1) Can I do this with drives that come from different O.S.?
2.) Is this a "plug and play deal or do I have to access the BIOS to set the DRIVE boot sequence when I boot after installation?
Thanks for shedding any light on this. (no need for two broken computers with perfectly fine Hard Drives!)
 Thom Bailey1. All material on the old XP hard drive will be visible to the WINDOWS 7 SYSTEM. With the exception of a few system files that you are not needing.
2. No need to make BIOS changes.

Of course, you should  not TRY to boot from the old XP system. Windows 7 can read all the user date of the old rive. Even use a few programs.
This MAY help answer some questions.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/products/features/windows-easy-transferAs long as they are SATA HDD's and you connect them to SATA 3 or higher on the MBoard they will show up as slave drives and all the data will be accessible.Geek, patio, thanks so much! I'm on it.
Thom Bailey