Seeking advice on installing a new hard drive

Byron172Byron172 Adelaide, South Australia Member
edited February 2006 in Hardware
Does anyone have any advice on the following scenario:

My mate has two small (we're talking tiny) hard drives in his tower - one is 10 gig the other 6 gig. His CPU is quite decent and works well for his needs, he has plenty of RAM and a reasonable processor speed so I have offered him my old 40 gig HDD. What is our best option?

Should I (can I?) install the 40 gig as a third hard drive, and if so, do I run one of the drives off the CD/DVD drive as a slave or is there a better way? Or should I get rid of the current slave HDD (6 gig) and replace it with the 40 giga?

Also, at some stage I would like to get his O/S onto the larger, quicker drive. Any suggestions on the best way to do this, should I clone/copy his current master across to the new drive or re-install the O/S and just copy his files across?

Any advice will be greatly appreciated....
:cheers:

Comments

  • TexTex Dallas/Ft. Worth
    edited February 2006
    dump the old drives. They are very slow.....

    Use ghost or another imaging program to image the OS to the new drive then copy the data over
  • profdlpprofdlp The Holy City Of Westlake, Ohio
    edited February 2006
    I'll second what Tex suggested. :)
  • Byron172Byron172 Adelaide, South Australia Member
    edited February 2006
    Thanks guys, good advice. I've actually gone ahead and done a clean install of XP onto the 40giga and will put his current master in as a slave. This will allow me to drag across his vital files and then wipe clean. Although I have a cloning program I was a bit hesitant to use it (it would be my first time and I don't want to mess it up and lose all of his files). Once I've dragged across, I'm gonna do my first clone using his spare HDD, just as a guinea pig experiment, that way I'll be more confident next time.
    Also, there's nothing like a clean install. Starting fresh, tweaking, adding all the must have software....call me weird, but it I love it.
    Thanks again,
    B
  • Byron172Byron172 Adelaide, South Australia Member
    edited February 2006
    Just as an aside to this, how many internal hard drives can you have?
  • edcentricedcentric near Milwaukee, Wisconsin Icrontian
    edited February 2006
    most older systems will support four IDE devices, HDD and opticals combined. Some mobo have four connectors, but they may or may not support 8 devices, you have to check.
    Of course you go Tex on us and put in a drive controler card and run any number that your heart desires (and wallet can afford).
  • Byron172Byron172 Adelaide, South Australia Member
    edited February 2006
    I getcha....so basically two drives (primary & slave) for each IDE connection. Therefore, if I want a third hard drive I can rig it up as a slave on the CD drive ribbon only. (yeah?)
  • Byron172Byron172 Adelaide, South Australia Member
    edited February 2006
    [ You start with a full bag of luck, and an empty bag of experience. The trick is to fill the bag of experience before you empty the bag of luck. If you succeed you win the game. ]

    Off topic for a sec, can I just say to Tex, I've read quite a few philosophies in my time but your signature takes the cake man!!!!!
  • TexTex Dallas/Ft. Worth
    edited February 2006
    glad it tickled your fancy.

    Tex
  • ArmoArmo Mr. Nice Guy Is Dead,Only Aqua Remains Member
    edited February 2006
    Byron172 wrote:
    Just as an aside to this, how many internal hard drives can you have?

    as many as you can connect into it, but you can only have somthng like 23 volumes ( what windows can store stuff on ). minimum volume size is 8MB, biggest XP can do is 2TB, unless you have a version of server 2000 SP4 or server 2003 which supports LBA 64, in which case its 512TB lol
  • Byron172Byron172 Adelaide, South Australia Member
    edited February 2006
    WTF!!!!!! 512TB !!!!! Thats huge!!!!!!
    I'd be lucky to ever use 1TB.
    Thanks for your feedback Armo.
  • Byron172Byron172 Adelaide, South Australia Member
    edited February 2006
    OK.....so I loaded XP onto his new hard drive using my own cpu. Everything was going great....then I take it and put it into his tower and it won't boot. I get a black screen with a full page Windows message asking how I would like to boot (ie safe mode, Normal etc) and it tells me that I am receiving the message due to either incorrect shutdown or because new software or hardware has recently been installed. I then go to "Boot Windows normally" and I get a quick flash of BSOD and then nothing. Computer returns to start up screen!!!!!!
    This happens if I choose safe mode also........any ideas or suggestions????
    Do I maybe have to do the install while the hard drive is connected to his motherboard????:scratch:
  • ArmoArmo Mr. Nice Guy Is Dead,Only Aqua Remains Member
    edited February 2006
    you cant take a hard drive from 1 machine and put it straight into another like that, you will at least have to preform a repair instalation of windows.

    when you install windows, it configures itself on the hardware in the machine, it communicates to the machine though the HAL.dll ( which you'll see alot of people will have troubles with ) if the HAL cant communicate with the hardware XP will not run, and the only real way to rebuild the HAL is to do at minimum a repair install of XP, or a full blown reinstall... unless the hardware is exactly the same in both machines.

    you will have to have the drive connected to the motherboard you intend to use the hard drive with.
  • TexTex Dallas/Ft. Worth
    edited February 2006
    your receiving a message that new hardware has been installed right? After yanking the drive and slapping it into a completely differant system? And your wondering WHY your getting the message?

    OMG

    Tex
  • Byron172Byron172 Adelaide, South Australia Member
    edited February 2006
    Yeah, as amatter of fact I was, but thanks to this forum and its friendly subscribers I now understand that I can't do what I tried.....the reason I mentioned the message re: new software/hardware was so that anyone wishing to help had all the detail......not cos I was confused by it's relationship to the scenario.
    Also, the reason I was unsure was cos I've put other hard drives into other towers twice before and they've booted up no worries(O/S - Windows98SE & Windows2000), mainly to retreive files or folders. I apologise if my ignorance annoyed you Tex.

    Thanks Armo for the constructive advice.....
  • rocket9244rocket9244 nebraska,usa
    edited February 2006
    format the 40 gig ..clean install xp..hook up the other hd as slave..drag/drop the files from those other hd onto the 40 gig..unplug the other hds and just use the 40...those others are prob runnin at 5200 rpm and the 40 is prob 7200 rpm..which means the 5200 will slow down your system..besides they are so small..throw away the smallest of the 2..and keep the other blank..use it for backup of any files you might need in case of the 40 crashing..i put all my downloads into a download folder and music into a music folder.i burn these to cd once a month..in case puter craps i still got my tunes/software.
  • Byron172Byron172 Adelaide, South Australia Member
    edited February 2006
    This is pretty much exactly what I ended up doing. Now I have to convert his current files to NTFS cos they are currently using FAT32 file system. Although I know that in theory it's a pretty simple procedure, I'm a bit tentative that I may destroy some of his important files in the convert. Is it as easy to convert to NTFS as it seems? Any feedback from people who have done a convert before would be much appreciated......
  • TexTex Dallas/Ft. Worth
    edited February 2006
    yes its super easy and you destroy the performance due to the default cluster size it uses on the ntfs partiton when converting. But other then that hey.. Go for it! its a piece of cake to do.

    My rule of thumb is never convert dos partitions to ntfs. Back your data up properly and format the partition the right way. Then copy the files.

    But maximizing the performance of my box's may be more important to me then you also.

    Tex
  • Byron172Byron172 Adelaide, South Australia Member
    edited February 2006
    Sorry mate, none of what you have just written make any sense to me.....i'm assuming your being partly sarcastic and partly trying to offer advice, however the advice is obscured by the sarcasm.
  • TexTex Dallas/Ft. Worth
    edited February 2006
    Not seeing what your missing? Lets try again.. Work with me here mate. This isnt hard.....

    You screw up the performance of the drive doing this.

    As in don't do it. Is that clear?

    backup the data. Format the partition properly with ntfs. then copy the data back.

    I can't make it much clearer.

    Converting from DOS to NTFS is a bad idea. BAD IDEA. And I told you EXACTLY what you needed to do and WHY it was a bad idea.

    If you can not understand this I really doubt you are going to understand the technical details and underlying principles of what actualy happens on the conversion and why its bad. It phucks up the performance. don't do it. Just leave it at that!

    I told you exactly what to do to fix it right?

    Not sure how else to help you mate? I mean this is about as simple as this can be explained. You gotta work with us so we can help you.

    Conversion BAD! No DO! Makes disk very SLOW!

    Tex
  • Byron172Byron172 Adelaide, South Australia Member
    edited February 2006
    OK I'll put it to you like this - I have in his tower a 40 gig HDD with a clean install of XP (NTFS), I also have a small HDD (10 gig) which has all his files on it, operating on Windows 2000 that, for some reason was installed using FAT32. I'm not doing any partitioning I purely want to bring his files across to the new HDD. Now it is my understanding that if his files are on a system using FAT32 they will not be recognised by XP. Therefore, I just need to know the best way to convert these files prior to bringing them across to the new O/S......I can back his files up till the cows come home, but I still need to convert them at some stage don't I?
  • profdlpprofdlp The Holy City Of Westlake, Ohio
    edited February 2006
    Byron172 wrote:
    ...I can back his files up till the cows come home, but I still need to convert them at some stage don't I?
    When you copy them over to the NTFS drive it will happen automatically. You're not just copying a file in one chunk, it's done on a bit-by-bit basis. The bits will just be arranged differently on a partition formatted with a different file structure. :)
  • TexTex Dallas/Ft. Worth
    edited February 2006
    Byron172 wrote:
    . Now it is my understanding that if his files are on a system using FAT32 they will not be recognised by XP. ?

    That was the problem here.

    Look I am not being a smart aazz but.... Man this would be much easier for all of us in the future if you didnt assume stuff like this. Your just not real knowledgable right now. And we want to help ya but....

    ASK this type of question first.

    The answer was simple. XP sees fat32 fine and just copy them. You made the problem way more complicated by assuming stuff like this.

    We now have a couple pages of posts about converting fat32 to ntfs that you couldnt understand, have no relevance to solving your problem anyway.

    Again no one is picking on you. Just ask the basic questions first and quit assuming stuff. Its just getting you in trouble. We are ALWAYS happy and willing to help. But sometimes those basic assumptions your making are flawed. Don't worry though as the good news is that you will get better at this the more you read here and the more you listen. Lots of our long time regulars came here as complete NOOB's that could barely turn on their computer without help. And now they are very strong technicaly. They know all about installing, repairing and tuning XP, watercooling and overclocking etc... And to be honest it's been fun to watch them grow in their abilitys. We all actually enjoy this and enjoy leading the newbies into the future.

    Best of Luck!

    Tex
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