What y'all said.      I'm wanting to find out since I have a C drive for Sonar and an S drive for storage, do I need an external backup drive in case an elephant or something falls on my PC? Is it practical? and What is  the difference between a  SSD and HD? 
 
sorry for my complete ignorance of PC operations

An SSD does not have any moving parts and uses RAM (which you're now familiar with  ) instead of heads and  platters that spin.  This makes data access very fast, but these are also very expensive (where a 256 GB SSD drive can cost more than a 3TB "normal" hard drive.
 
There's more to it, but that's the main gist of the difference.

Wouldn't 

craigb
An SSD does not have any moving parts and uses RAM (which you're now familiar with  ) instead of heads and  platters that spin.  This makes data access very fast, but these are also very expensive (where a 256 GB SSD drive can cost more than a 3TB "normal" hard drive.
 
There's more to it, but that's the main gist of the difference.

Wouldn't that make them ideal for Sonar? faster access type of thing

bayoubill
Wouldn't 

craigb
An SSD does not have any moving parts and uses RAM (which you're now familiar with  ) instead of heads and  platters that spin.  This makes data access very fast, but these are also very expensive (where a 256 GB SSD drive can cost more than a 3TB "normal" hard drive.
 
There's more to it, but that's the main gist of the difference.

Wouldn't that make them ideal for Sonar? faster access type of thing

Yes it wood.  The limiting factor at the moment is the cost.  If money is no object to you then go for it.
 

I don't see the problem if both OSs formatted the hard disk drive to the usual formatting system used by both XP and Windows 7. That would be the NTFS (New Technology File System) unless you did the XP hard drive in the old FAT32 formatting, which by the way, can not be over 32Gb or have a file on it more than 4Gb.
 
So, double left click on Computer (Windows 7) and on the XP computer (My Computer) icon on the desktop. Right click on your C:\ drive (or another partition if you have those) and select Properties. When the smaller windows comes up with all the tabs on top, there you will see what file system you have on each harddrive - probably both will say NTFS.
No problem at all, except XP will not run on a Windows 7 computer, Windows 7 will, but reading the info off of the harddrive should be no problem with all the other info on the harddrive. Just stick the harddrive as a second drive into your Windows 7 computer till you transfer the info and copy to the harddrive in your Windows 7 computer. It will take a way less time also.
 
If both computers show this as the file system you are home free, pass go, collect money but not from me.

Just a little humor at the last there. See all the tabs on top. The one marked Tools is important. It checks the harddrive to see if it is okay.

 Or put the info from the XP computer on whatever drive you stick in there after taking it back out of the Windows 7 computer or however you are going to do it. Both probably will be SATA drives so take the cord connecting the harddrive out of the XP computer also for the data not the power connectors after disconnecting from the harddrive and the motherboard (data cable) and put in new computer (should not be a problem if done carefully), before you do that, make sure you are not full of static electricity by touching the back of either computer with your hand (do not rub your feet on a carpet or anything to pick up static electricity while you work on both computers) and then the harddrive from the old computer will be hooked up in the new computer and transfer the info (copy it) on the new harddrive and afterwards take out the old XP harddrive, and perhaps hook up a new harddrive (so you have two harddrives) in the Windows 7 computer.
 
A little care in working inside the computer and should be no problem.
 
http://windows.microsoft....uently-asked-questions

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/313348
Oh, unplug the computer from the power before working on it, and you do not have to stick the old harddrive in the computer. Most computers open up from the side so if the power supply connection for the harddrive reaches (extra ones doing nothing in there - look for the end of it ) and the data SATA cable usually is long enough to reach a slot on the motherboard where the new hardrive in the new computer is attached to the motherboard (usually see other slot there) and set the old harddrive flat on a box or something that will just hold it, and copy the data and disconnect afterwards after disconnecting the power again for the computer.
 
Oh, the old harddrive use to be set as a master harddrive but if sticking it in the new computer you will have to set it to be a slave so the harddrive in your new Windows 7 computer is the master harddrive.
 
Well, if not sure and do not want to do that, then an external drive can be hooked up (USB probably) and copy twice to do the same thing.
 

I don't think you understood the OP properly..
 

When my old old XP computer died due to a power supply malfunction, I bought another XP machine. I removed the hard drive from the old old box and put it in a hard drive enclosure. That way I could access my old projects and save new ones to it.

 
He's talking about an original XP machine which died,  replaced by a NEW XP machine. How long is it since you could buy an XP machine new?  He put the HDD from the FIRST XP machine into an external case.  Being that old it's unlikely to be SATA, and unlikely to be NTFS formatted, though it makes no difference either way.
 
He just needs to plug it into the new Win7 box, copy the data, then scrap the old HDD.

57Gregy
As I understand it, the enclosure (with XP on it) won't work with the new W7 machine. Is that true?
...

You need to remove the Windows from the old hard drive in the Enclosure. It's space wasting. You can't boot out of it anyway, I don't think.
 
This is what I do and have about 3 or 4 hard drives with stuff backed up in it, and a pair of them are "duplicates" so I actually have 2 backups. I have one enclosure unit per computer, and I can network them if needed to back up things some more. (And all of them are the old hard drives!)
 
All in all, move your needed files somewhere else temporarily, then format the hard drive in the enclosure and then copy your files back to it. This is what I do, instead of using external stuff. And if I need I can have one of these hard drives left at a friend's house as an external backup. I trust my friend more than any cloud out there.
 
If these files are tied to XP, then we have a problem, but I doubt this is the issue. Never seen that.

Thanks. I suppose what I am really after is, will an external HD work with an XP computer to save my Cakewalk projects, and with W7 to open them from.
The reason I'm asking, our store had some drives on clearance. When I punched out last night at 10 pm, there was only 1 left. So I bought it, before I could come back and read this. Retail in our store, $110. Clearance price, $55.
I got it for $35. Seagate Free Agent Desk, 500GB.
I have 15 days to return it, if necessary.

57Gregy
Thanks. I suppose what I am really after is, will an external HD work with an XP computer to save my Cakewalk projects, and with W7 to open them from.
 
The reason I'm asking, our store had some drives on clearance. When I punched out last night at 10 pm, there was only 1 left. So I bought it, before I could come back and read this. Retail in our store, $110. Clearance price, $55.
...

As long as you have USB ports, sure! I don't know many computers that don't.
 
I gave up on updating the hard drives to new ones, since none of them go past 7200RPM (something like that) and the size, in my book is a bigger reason to lose more work. Sometimes, I'm that stupid and paranoid! So, you might as well use the larger HD for backup, after the project is done ... copy the folder over! Not to mention that reinstalling, blah and blah, is any fun!
 
I have not had the experience of something in the backup hard drive not opening up ... though in the case of music, if you wanted to redo it or update it, I would copy it back to the main computer, so the enclosure is strictly a back up, not a usable entity otherwise.
 
I have been "careful" with backing up things, since my 1st computer in 1989 locked up after 3 weeks and I lost 100 pages of a novel that I have never been able to recover or rewrite. On that day I knew my backups would be external and that was it. Haven't lost a whole lot since, but I did lose the shows that I had done in the internet in music, which was about 100 hours of music that was done on a Real Audio server I had the license to. Still don't know what happened to those files or where that computer went. I think the guy at the ISP that said I stole some of his bandwidth (with 25 streams only?), wiped the hard drive on purpose!

57Gregy
Thanks. I suppose what I am really after is, will an external HD work with an XP computer to save my Cakewalk projects, and with W7 to open them from.
The reason I'm asking, our store had some drives on clearance. When I punched out last night at 10 pm, there was only 1 left. So I bought it, before I could come back and read this. Retail in our store, $110. Clearance price, $55.
I got it for $35. Seagate Free Agent Desk, 500GB.
I have 15 days to return it, if necessary.

It will work quite happily in your Win7 machine, it may work in your XP machine.
Suck it and see...