accessing windows old

Hi, before I used the Vista beta cd to boot to install, somehow I created severe problems with my Sony laptop (part of the drive must've been hidden) by using Partition Magic and resizing. Upon reboot, I could NOT get XP back. Options to use last known good configuration, safe mode, none of the only 4 choices available would work. I then used PM boot cd to fix anything that might've been damaged and PM did find an Error110 I believe and it said it fixed it but it froze then. Subsequent uses of PM still didn't fix anything, all options greyed out, but showed 2 disks (1 harddrive tho with serious ???NTFS???NTFS????NTFS???etc on disk1; disk 0 was small) so I gave up & booted with Vista. Miracles began happening and I will be the first to buy this excellent OS!
First a chkdisk took place, found errors, fixed them. Then a 20 mins. series of "Replacing invalid security ID with default security ID" for...couple thousand files! Then the vista splash screen and I was safely on my way to installing vista.
I thought it would overwrite my current XP but during the install, it mentioned that 'another version of an OS was detected and the files would be stored in a file called Windows.old'. Once vista installed, I found the Windows.old folder, hovering showed 458mb size but viewing properties, the size is 7.5gb. I would like to move that folder off the internal drive to an external.
Can this be done without affecting Vista?
TIA for any help........katy

Hello,
Yes in a clean install of Windows Vista (you did not upgrade), Windows.old is just a backup of your previous windows folders. It is safe to move or delete, as long as you do not need any information from it.
- JB