Help my Hard Drive

[Minerva]

I have recently added a new hard drive (ATA66 20.4 Gb--Okay, it's not 100, but my motherboard only supports 33/66), use it as the secondary to my old ATA33 6.4 Gb drive. As my new one is a bit faster, I want to use it as the primary. How can I move all files (incl. Windows98) to the new drive?

I have CD-RW to back up files, if that helps.

If you need any other information to reply to this, please let me know. I had no problem with fitting things in my system, but have little idea what to do after that. My computer knowledge is less than Weasel's now.

Thanks in advance.

[Mr Sleep]

I think that your CD-RW is the only way to go, i have been having a similar dilemma myself, Windows98 should only be about 300MB so that shouldn't be to much of a problem. One of the problems of writing all these files to a CD is that they are made read only files, so you have to go through and change them all back to archive or whatever they were. The easiest way to do this is highlight all the relevant files and then click properties then it should apply it to all the selected files

Another problem one has is how to transfer these files over, you need a operating system to effectively transfer them.

I can't think of a way off hand. It would be possible with another hard disk. You can also install windows to another path, say D:/windows. That would give you an operating system on the secondary drive, but that wouldn't be your primary drive then though......i will give it some thought

[Xandax]

IIRC there are programs that can "mirror" your hard-drive onto another drive/CD-roms.

I recall something called Partition Magic, but haven't used them for many years, so I don't have any concrete info.
But I'd imagine that this would be the way to go about it "safest".

[Yshania]

As Xan has said, you can buy software to transfer the files but it is only useful if the drives are the same size.

What I did was to open windows explorer, enabling viewing of all files (including system and hidden)and manually copy the drive information.

Select all folders and manually copy them across, using copy and paste. DO NOT copy your windows file yet. It is advisable to do this copy/paste in chunks.

Now, right click on the windows file and select copy/paste to new drive, but cancel immediately the copy starts - this would have created the folders needed in your new drive.

On your old drive, double click on your windows file to view all folders. Select all folders EXCEPT WIN386.SWP then copy them to the newly created directory on your new drive (WIN386.SWP is the swap file and is in use so cannot be copied)

Now, once the transfer is complete, if you view the properties of each drive you will see there should only be thedifference of one file (the WIN386.SWP file)

Restart your pc using a startup disk (if you haven't got a start up disk, in control panel, click on add/remove programmes and there is a tab there to enable you to create one). Using fdisk you will get your system to recognise the new drive. You need to say 'yes' to large drive support, something about no active partitions will come up asking if you wish the new drive to be made active (ie the boot drive) select yes.

The WIN386.SWP file will be recreated by windows. Good luck

[KidD01]

Just a thought here :
If you put your larger HDD for your system drive, it'll be tough when your PC got virus.

IMHO it's much safer to put your system on the smaller HDD and the rest of the data on your larger HDD.

[Mr Sleep]

Originally posted by KidD01:
<STRONG>Just a thought here :
If you put your larger HDD for your system drive, it'll be tough when your PC got virus.

IMHO it's much safer to put your system on the smaller HDD and the rest of the data on your larger HDD.</STRONG>

The problem is that newer drives are faster, the technology has improved quite a lot in only a couple of years

[KidD01]

True indeed, it's a tough choice. But my PC use the smaller and a little slow HDD for system, I guess I stick into to safe zone

[Xandax]

Originally posted by KidD01:
<STRONG>Just a thought here :
If you put your larger HDD for your system drive, it'll be tough when your PC got virus.
<snip></STRONG>

When you get virus - a bit pessimistic there aren't we

BTW - was just attack once more, is it possible to love software, because I love my firewall

[Mr Sleep]

Originally posted by KidD01:
<STRONG>True indeed, it's a tough choice. But my PC use the smaller and a little slow HDD for system, I guess I stick into to safe zone </STRONG>

Same here actually

[HighLordDave]

What brand of hard drive did you buy? I have bought both Western Digital and Maxtor hard drives in the last year and each of those come with a bootable utility disk that will partition, format and copy the entire contents of one hard drive to another hard drive. After you copy the original drive to the new one, just switch the jumpers to make your new drive the master drive and the old one the slave, and you should be good to go.

It seems that this may be the way to go if you want to transfer everything. If you bought a Maxtor drive and don't have the disk go [url="http://www.maxtor.com/Maxtorhome.htm"]here[/url]. If you have a Western-Digital drive try [url="http://www.wdc.com/service/ftp/drives.html"]here[/url]. I imagine that other hard drive manufacturers (ie-Seagate et al) have their own utilities that do the same things, so you should try their webpages and click on "support and service" (or whatever they have that's similar) and look for their downloadable utilities.

As a cautionary note, if you are running an ATA/33 and ATA/66 hard drive on the same IDE channel, your data will only move through the channel at the slowest speed, not one speed for one hard drive and a faster speed for the other. That's why you shouldn't place a CD-ROM and a hard drive on the same IDE controller; CD-ROMs are usually ATA33 devices while newer hard drives are ATA/100 devices. You won't see much performance difference if you put both drives on the same channel.

Also, you can buy ATA/100 controllers on PCI expansion cards which will augment/replace those on your motherboard.

Of course you can alwasy do what I do (much to the chagrin of my wife): upgrade your computer every two years or so and switch out all of the major components (CPU, motherboard, sound card, video card, hard drive, memory, etc.) enabling you to get the most performance out of your machine.

[Bloodstalker]

If you get Ghost, you can burn an image of your OS including everything installed, to CD. Then, you can boot from cd, restore the image to wichever drive you want. and it only takes about 10-15 minutes to restore.

I usually set up my hard drive with multipule partitions, and keep a ghosted image of my OS on one partition. that way, if something goes flaky, I can just restore in about 5 minutes from partition to partition.

[Bordin_Steelaxe]

Eh...

Why don't u just copy all the files? U just have to make sure that u have enabled to see all files, after that u can just format ur old drive, that way u have "moved" the files Beside that it's always safer to copy files than to move them, cos if something goes wrong u still have the files.

Another thing I wondered about was how long u had ur win installed? If it's over 2 months u could as well start over and install windows on the new drive (a fresh start is always the best) and then copy the essential files (favorites, documents and everything else u would like to have moved) from ur old drive to the new drive after u have installed windows. Beside that I would highly recommend u to install win2k or winxp (if u have one of these )

Originally posted by KidD01:
Just a thought here :
If you put your larger HDD for your system drive, it'll be tough when your PC got virus.
IMHO it's much safer to put your system on the smaller HDD and the rest of the data on your larger HDD.

Originally posted by Sleepo:
The problem is that newer drives are faster, the technology has improved quite a lot in only a couple of years

I have to agree with both of u, IF u get into the unlucky situation of getting a virus, u r rather f***ed, but then again, if u want to use the better performance of a new and larger hd, you can always split it up. I bought a 40 gb hd because the 10 gb I had weren't enuff. Then I splitted the 40 gb up in a 4 gb and a 36 gb. The 4gb was my system drive where I only have winxp (+ the huge swap file of 2 gb) and a few essential programs. The 10 gb is for my main progs and the 36 gb is for games, films and other stuff. That way u get most of the performance and a lot protection against virus

[Ned Flanders]

Minerva,

If you use a disk mirroring utility, know that some of them require both disk drives to be similar. The 6.4 GB and 20.4 GB might be too dissimilar in that the mirror program might not function. Just a thought so you didn't buy a program only to find you can't use it.

I'd recommend backing up all your data to a cd or two, using the fdisk utility to make the new a primary drive. set the jumper on the drive to be a master and disconnect your old HDD. Then format c: /s on the new drive. Reinstall the OS and applications, move your data back into their respective places and add your old HDD as a slave. The old drive can serve as a backup. Just format it and backup your data on a second disk drive. Then if the master crashes, you still have all your data on the slave.

[Minerva]

Thanks, everyone. Now I'm really confused... I thought having a pint would help. I should print this page out, then read it tomorrow morning...

Seriously, I am beginning to think it is far easier to reinstall everything, after backing up a few essentials, like saved games . Is it a good thing to do?

I noticed, ever since I added the new drive (I can't find the brand at the moment), it loads slower and often freeze. I have Partition Magic 5.0 to make a several partitions in the both drives, though I didn't have much problem before. Is this something I should concern about? I hoped this would change if I change the primary/secondary drives, or re-format the both drives...

[KidD01]

Originally posted by Minerva:
<STRONG>Seriously, I am beginning to think it is far easier to reinstall everything, after backing up a few essentials, like saved games . Is it a good thing to do? </STRONG>

It's the safest thing but yet will consume lots of your time. Since you've gotta back up some files then reformat your HDD and then reinstall and reconfigure everything. I've experienced this kind of thing and end up spending almost 2 days

Originally posted by Minerva:
<STRONG>I noticed, ever since I added the new drive (I can't find the brand at the moment), it loads slower and often freeze. I have Partition Magic 5.0 to make a several partitions in the both drives, though I didn't have much problem before. Is this something I should concern about? I hoped this would change if I change the primary/secondary drives, or re-format the both drives... </STRONG>

From my experience, I never like to "split" my HDD since I've got bad experience regarding partitioning the HDD. Some of my friends also got the unpleasant experience ( which when your HDD data got F*cked up i.e. crosslinked etc.) after a huge "house cleaning" on the HDD. It's a real trouble some. If you intend to split it anyway, don't split your system HDD.