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Post new topic Win98/New Hard Drive copying?
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Author Topic:  Win98/New Hard Drive copying?
Dave Van Allen


From:
Doylestown, PA , US , Earth
Post  Posted 20 Feb 2000 12:31 pm    
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I have an older Pentium I intend upgrading with a PCI slot HD controller card for Ultra ATA66 ,installing a large 7200rpm Ultra ATA66 drive for use with that controller.

I would Like the new fast drive to be THE drive in the machine, yet I do not want to lose all of the data/embedded serial numbers for Apps and other stuff on my current HD. The reason I think I want to migrate to the new drive is I want to use the faster drive for better performance with Audio software (CakewalkPro and the like)and am unsure if I can take advantage of the new HD's speed if the apps are still running from an older slower drive on the motherboard IDE controller...

Advice on how to transfer/migrate the current drive's contents to the new drive would be appreciated. Or suggestions if it is NOT necessary to do so...

Do I need a third party software package to make this happen or what?

TIA

dva
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Don Walters

 

From:
Saskatchewan Canada
Post  Posted 20 Feb 2000 7:42 pm    
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Dave, I use Norton Ghost a lot in my business to configure a desktop PC then blast the image to all other PCs. Works like a charm! Although I've never done it, the documentation explains how to image from one drive to another in the same machine, which apparently also works flawlessly. When you're done, the two images are exact and if the target drive is larger than the source drive, the target drive has unpartitioned space on it. There are excellent programs available that let you enlarge the active partition on the new drive to use the entire disk. My favourite is Partition Magic. No FDISK or any of those awkward DOS things.

[This message was edited by Don Walters on 20 February 2000 at 07:44 PM.]

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Jack Stoner


From:
Kansas City, MO
Post  Posted 21 Feb 2000 3:27 am    
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Go to the Western Digital web page and see if you can find a program called EZ Disk. They used to provide this program with their replacement hard drives. It's a DOS program that has functions for formatting, partitioning and a utility to copy the entire contents of a drive to another.

Last I remember it was free and available for downloading on their site.

[This message was edited by Jack Stoner on 21 February 2000 at 03:30 AM.]

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Donny Hinson

 

From:
Glen Burnie, Md. U.S.A.
Post  Posted 21 Feb 2000 5:24 pm    
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Stay with a hard drive of 8.2 gigs or less, and you'll have far fewer problems. Partitioning a home computer HD is asking for trouble (sooner or later!)

Also, HD spindle speed isn't an accurate indicator of actual drive speed! Check access times to be sure you're actually making an imrovement.
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Everett Cox

 

From:
Marengo, OH, USA (deceased)
Post  Posted 22 Feb 2000 9:51 pm    
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Hey Dave,
Sorry--I had mis-posted my reply under John Lacey's request for computer help. And reading your post, again, this might not be your best way to go.

This procedure basically has you install the new drive as a 'slave' to the existing drive or as a 'master' on the second IDE connector. You then copy everything except a 'dynamic' swap file from the old to the new and, finally, reverse the way they are connected.
Windows assigns drive letters in a way that normally makes your first hard-drive "C" and makes other hard-drives or cdrom's "D", "E", etc depending on the order in which the system "sees" them. My concern is that I don't know for sure what the order would be when you use BOTH the IDE AND PCI controllers. It might be that you cannot get Windows to 'see' your new drive as the first one and would thus have a problem 'booting' up from it. The documentation (if you got any) for the new drive should speak to this issue. Drop me a line and let me know the brand and model of the drive as well as what other cdrom, tape units, zip drives, etc you have on your machine.

The following is the reply I had originally intended to post:
...........................
Here's a fairly simple way to install the new drive IF you don't have software to do it for you. This involves setting 'jumpers' on the drive(s) and swapping drive cables.
Go to the following URL for a step-by-step.

http://www.pcmech.com/file_transfer.htm

This site has a wealth of info! go to their home page and click on the 'guides' tab.

[This message was edited by Everett Cox on 22 February 2000 at 09:56 PM.]

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Bobby Lee


From:
Cloverdale, California, USA
Post  Posted 26 Feb 2000 6:43 pm    
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Some audio software allows you to set the drive and folder for temporary files. It really doesn't matter what drive the program itself loads from - once it's in memory it doesn't need to go back to that drive.

I keep most of my audio software on my C: drive, but I have the TEMP environment variable mapped to E:\TEMP which is on a faster disk. Most software that doesn't explicitly allow you to set your temp directory will look at the TEMP environment variable to figure out where to write scratch files.

------------------
Sierra Session S-12 (E9), Speedy West D-10 (E9, D6),
Sierra S-8 Laptop (D13), Fender Stringmaster D-8 (D13, A6)
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Marty Pollard

 

Post  Posted 26 Feb 2000 7:55 pm    
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Yeah, I like it b0b. I read this earlier and gave it some thought. I would force the Win386.swp to the SCSI along with the actual data files for quick reads and writes (not to mention plenty of space) and leave the OS and apps as they are (on the root).
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