The 7200 RPM HDD

[wing7788]

Thanks guys for your convincing thoughts on the benefits of the 7200 RPM drive as against 5400 RPM. I just bought one!

Now the question. I have to transfer all my files from the old drive to the new drive. But first things first:

1. After connecting it to the slave of the secondary channel (its the one which is free), will my system recognize the new drive even if it has not been formatted yet? My BIOS is up-to-date and should not post any problem on that matter.

2. If it does recognize, can I format it through windows (of course the old drive is still intact http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif )

3. How do I partition it after formatting (yup, its still in slave at the secondary channel)?

4. Lastly, how do I transfer all files, including the OS, to the new drive? Will Norton Ghost do the trick?

As expected, the new drive will be transferred to become the primary master.

http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif Help http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

[Undeadlord]

Ok http://www.sysopt.com/forum/wink.gif

1. Yes the BIOS should pick it up no problem.

2 + 3. You will need to partition it before you format it. You can do both through windows. To partition, run fdisk at the run prompt and I beleive its option 5, select disk, you will want to select your new drive that is not in use. Will usually be drive 2. Then partition it, I think its option 1 then 1 agian. After its done you will need to reboot. Then in windows again. You should see the new drive on Exploxer. Then right click on the drive in my computer and selcr format. It will prob warn you this is a fixed disk, selct ok. Then slect Full format, enter in a label if you want and BAM http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif its formatting. When its done your good to go.

4. Yes Norton Ghost will do it. Maybe someone else will chime in with info about that one though I have never used it. http://www.sysopt.com/forum/wink.gif


Undeadlord

[wing7788]

Great! Great!

Any other suggestions, aside from Norton Ghost, on how to transfer my files from the old drive to the new one? Will a simple copy and paste do it?

http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

[wyvrn]

Have you tried XXCOPY (http://www.xxcopy.com/xxcopy/) ? It works like Xcopy and even has a /clone switch that will do what you want. This will be quick and painless, it took me about 5 minutes to learn the syntax.

Cut and paste would work as long as you are viewing hidden and system files. But this is only good for transferring individual files like mp3's and documents. You would still have to install your OS on the drive as well as any programs.

Ghost makes an exact copy of your hard drive and copies the OS and all of your programs onto the new hard drive, ready to bootup and go.

[This message has been edited by wyvrn (edited 05-30-2001).]

[Bsdboy]

Your drive should have software to copy your old drive to your new one,some such as Western Digital Data Lifeguard tools and Maxtor's Maxblast are very good.

Bsdboy

[Fingers]

EZ-Install (which is a part of Data Lifegaurd Tools) will format and partition your new drive, as well make an exact copy of your existing HDD. I expect that Maxblast will do the same, but I have no experience with it.

The entire DataLifegaurd Tools Suite (http://www.wdc.com/service/ftp/drives.html) can be downloaded from the Western Digital website.

EZ-Install is also available as a "stand-alone" program, and is really all you need to format, partition, and copy drives.

[Bovon]

There is a lot of ways to copy an existing drive to a new one, and I like this method.

I have a program made by Ontrack. It is just like Windows Explorer, with many more features. Once I have the new drive formatted and partitioned, running as a slave to my master, I highlight the C: drive in Power Desk Explorer to get everything in the right pane. Then, I simply drag and drop everthing from the right pane to the new drive into the partition that will become the new C: drive. Do this for all partitions one at a time.

I also go to a dos prompt and do the following first:

C:\>ATTRIB -R -A -S -H (enter) This assures that all files are now removed from a read only state, and will copy over without problems.

After I have copied everything to the new drive, I go back to fdisk and make the dos partition active. I do it this way because if the dos partition is made active first, the old C: drive will be first in Explorer, and the new drive will show up as the D: drive. By not making the new drive's dos partition active first, all of the original partitions will be inline as they always have been, and the new drive with its partitions will fall at the end..simple'er for me to keep up with which partition is which, and I don't copy partition 'F:' over to say...'G:' on ethe new drive...

You can get a free version 4 of Ontrack Explorer here. (http://www.ontrack.com/powerdesk/)

Here is the link to the main page at Ontrack (http://www.ontrack.com/)

[Shagnasty]

Personally...I like Norton Ghost...I've
used it since before Norton bought it and
it's worked very well...One nice feature
is that you don't need to run Fdisk or
Format the drive...it takes care of it
I also use Ghost to create an Image file
after I have my system setup the way I
want it...I actually make two images..One
with just the bare essential system setup
without a lot of extra software etc...and
another with everything...Makes starting
over a lot easier...Especially with all the
download time involved in getting windows
etc. up to date.

[wyvrn]

Fingers, will that suite copy the image to a cdr drive?

[Fingers]

I'm pretty sure it won't, it's dos based.

[biglaker]

Wing7788: I may be misreading your intent but your initial post suggested that hooking up the drive to the second connector on the ribbon cable would assign the drive as secondary. The assignment of the drive as primary or secondary is done via the jumpers on the drive. As far as I know, if you put two drives on one ide port, one has to be jumpered as master, the other as slave. Also, later on when you transfer the "operating system", the new drive will have to be designated as the "active" partition. That is, the drive to boot from.
Good luck, let us know how it turned out.

[wing7788]

Everything's fine now.

I placed my new drive as primary slave (jumper settings and ribbon cable). From there, I partitioned it and formatted it. I used Norton Ghost to transfer all my files from the old drive to the "active partition" of the new one. It was very simple and striaght-forward.

I didn't know that its not necessary to format the drive when you use Norton Ghost. I'm sure its not going to be a problem if you format it before using Norton Ghost.

Thanx everyone.

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[This message has been edited by wing7788 (edited 05-30-2001).]

[Richard_Cranium72]

A lot of members much Senior to me have reccomended AGAINST copying the Operating System via these methods.

Use thc copy to transfer your important files, pictures etc but do a FRESH Install to get the Registry back to a minimal size..

DrVette

[wing7788]

Well, its over 5 days now and my system is still working, with no glitch or lock-ups.

I think Norton Ghost has done a good job here.

Cheers!

http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

[Bovon]

Richard, You are correct when you mention that a new install is much better than a copy back from an old drive. All it does really, is gets you back up and running without the hassle of reloading everything.

The drive I am now using has been carried over from about 3 or 4 drives and two motherboards/cpu's over the years, dating back to Win95A, and even that was an upgrade from Win 3.11. Many crashes, lotsa applications have come and gone...and I am certain the registry is running over with stuff it dosn't need, altho I use a registry cleaner and a dll finder that tells me what to get rid of...it surely never gets the Windows folder back to a size '10' again. The new upgrade coming up soon, will be completely new from the get go.