On a Dell running Windows 7 Pro I am booting from an internally located hard disk purchased March 2014, and connected to SATA0. This March 2014 disk contains partitions C: and D:, plus a RECOVERY partition.

If I disconnect this drive, put a new hard disk on SATA0, and install Windows 8, will I be able to access all partitions on the old hard drive if (a) I connect the old drive to the SATA1 port on the motherboard (b) I connect it to an external USB hard drive.

Will Windows 8 allow me to do this stuff or will it go crazy ? Or will it let me access everything except what had been previously the boot partition on the old drive ?

I will much appreciate advice on these issues.

Yes you should have no issues with this. You just have to be sure that your BIOS (or UEFI) is set to boot from the correct drive.

Windows will automatically assign new drive letters to the partitions.

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Data Medics - Hard Drive, SSD, and RAID Data Recovery Service Company

The only folders that might give you any issues is your actual user folders. But as long as your logged in as an administrator it should prompt you to take permission of the folder.

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Data Medics - Hard Drive, SSD, and RAID Data Recovery Service Company

Hi Data Medics:

Many many thanks. I'll give it a try.

Regards

Boblite

Interesting results, on my Dell Optiplex 7010 I bought a year ago, new.
Results are reported as a timeline to help clarify.


12:15am Physical setup: Hooked 500GB HD with Windows 8 to SATA 0 port on motherboard; Hooked 1000GB HD with Windows 7 to SATA 1 port on motherboard

12:25am In BIOS I set SATA 0 disk visible, SATA 1 disk not visible No problem. booted Win 8

12:28am In BIOS I set SATA 0 disk not visible, Sata 1 disk visible No problem, booted Win 7

12:32am In BIOS I set SATA 0 disk visible, Sata 1 disk visible. The system booted to Windows 8, but none of the partitions on the SATA 1 drive were seen by Windows Explorer.

12:35am I ran the Disk Management applet (Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management > Storage > Disk Management). In that view, hard disk 1 (i.e, the SATA 1 hard disk) was visible, and all its partitions were visible, but not assigned any drive letters. It had two partitions of interest, namely the boot partition, and a partition I had created to hold my data.

I unhid the data partition and rebooted.

12:39pm After rebooting, the data partition on hard disk 1 became visible in Windows Explorer, was assigned drive letter F, and files were fully accessible on that partition.

12:41 I shut down the system, went into BIOS, and set SATA disk 0 not visible, and set SATA disk 1 as visible. No problem, booted to Windows 7.

12:44 I shut down the system, went into BIOS, and set SATA disks 0 and disk 1 visible, and rebooted. I then ran the Disk Management applet, and unhid the boot partition on SATA disk 1.

12:47 Rebooted. Windows 8 (located on hard disk 0) went into action to establish its primacy. It recognized there was a boot partition on hard disk 1, and steriized that partition (not sure sterilized is the right word: but anyway, it rendered it unbootable.)

So... in sum... the data on the boot partition of hard disk 1 was exposed and made accessible, but the booting ability was removed.

12:55 Rebooted into BIOS, disabled hard disk 0, and kept hard disk 1 enabled. Booted. Got an error message shown in the attached photo:

As expected, Windows 8 had established itself as king, and beheaded its rival.