Hi, I am currently running off of Windows Vista Ultimate with a lot of installed games and programs on a Stock Dell 80gig... I was thinking about buying this new internal HDD: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=300146326857 and was wondering if when I get it I could install this HDD where the stock one is and connect them at the same time and transfer all the files to the 250gig... is this possible? could I boot from the 250gig without installing a fresh copy of Windows Vista by transfering every single file... then could I use the 80gig as a slave.. I was thinking about mounting the 80gig in an empty CD Drive slot and connecting both internally... Is any of this possible? Thanks for any input!
Hello, Ok, you can plug the new drive in as a slave (make sure jumpers are correct on it) or in another IDE channel on your mboard as master. Either way you can transfer any and all files you want to the new 250gb drive. However, you cannot then pretend that the new drive is the old drive and attempt to boot normally, the drive that you boot to vista now has an entry in the HAL (hardware application layer) that must match or else you usually can't boot, you could potentially lose all your data trying to do such a thing. I think it possible that it could be done if you set the partition sizes exactly the same and did some other advanced tricks into fooling the system that nothing has changed (maybe it's possible by using the recovery console), but I don't know how to do this and I've never heard of it being done. Perhaps someone will tell you a method though, but I doubt it. Maybe even there is third party software that will allow you to ghost your bootable os and all programs, anyone? Why are you getting the new drive? For space? Why don't you just plug in it, then you have space...? Or you want to run the os and your games off it because you think it will be faster? You could partition the new drive in two, say c: and d:, transfer anything you want from your current hard disk(including all data, saved games etc) to the d: partition on your new one, install vista and all your programs to c: and then you've got all your data there on d:. Then just plug in your old harddisk as a slave and you have that extra storage.
Thanks for your input I think im just going to hook up the new hard drive and reinstall everything... I don't need to transfer anything because I lost all my songs anyway, so I'll just use the old one as a slave and should be good to go. p.s. will it go faster if I install all my games on the 250 and boot on the 250 instead of installing on the 80 and booting from the 80? thanks again
The faster the peformance (in the short term anyway) will depend on what the hardware is capable of, for instance the disk you intend to buy is 7200rpm and has a 2mb cache. If these things are both better (higher numbers) than the spec of your old hd it should perform better. By the way, the drive you are planning on buying isn't such a good deal, for that price (or slightly less) you can get 250gb drives with an 8mb cache (hd cache is like fast ram memory but specifically for the hd, well worth having as much as possible). I think if you shop around, for that price or only a few pounds (or dollars) more you will be able to find 320gb drives with 16mb cache even! I don't know the best places to find that in the us unfortunatley. When you find one you might buy, look for reviews as it's possible despite the spec it may have problems that mean it's better to go for a different model/brand. So to answer your question, it will go faster if the drive is faster, and I suggest you buy a drive with a bigger cache. Over time though your drive will get messy and your data will get mixed in with the windows data and this makes everything, including the operating system itself, slower. So the best thing to do with your new 250gb drive is create a primary partition of around 50 to 80gb when first installing windows and call it c:, install windows to this and any programs that you use (they will ask to be installed in the program files on c by default anyway so this is fine). 50gb should be plenty of space for loads and loads of programs and games etc that you may be installing in future. Then (after installing windows) go to disk managment and create a second primary partition on your new disk and make this all of the rest of the disk, it will be around 180gb if you made your os partition 50gb. This will be the e: drive and you can call it "Data" or "Storage" or "my files" or whatever. Go to start and right click on "My Documents" and click "properties", then in the "target" field, put "E:\" or click "find target" and click the partition you want to have the my documents folder on (e in this case). Now always store your data, music, movies etc, in the relevant folder in the my documents folder (which is now on the e: drive) or store it in other folders on the e: drive that you create yourself. Then when you install programs you install them to the c drive as normal. This keeps the windows os data seperate from most of the other data on your computer and is a very good thing for keeping your system running well and fast in the long term. Then just plug your old os in as a slave and you can use this as even more storage should you ever need it. Remember to defragment your partitions regularly (once every couple of months max) to keep everything running fast and smooth, especially the partition with windows on.
wow thanks I just learned a lot more about this stuff.. would something like this work: http://cgi.ebay.com/HITACHI-320GB-I...ryZ64459QQrdZ1QQssPageNameZWD1VQQcmdZViewItem im not sure what SATA is and if my MOBO supports it, I know it supports IDE because that's what my old hard drive uses.
or maybe something like this: http://cgi.ebay.com/WD-250GB-7200-1...ryZ64459QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem but once again it's sata and I don't really understand that.
sorry to keep replying to my own thread but I removed one of my CD drives that I dont use and put the 80GB harddrive in there securely screwed it up and everything so now where my internal hard drive should be there is an empty space ready for a new one... I do have a Serial ATA compatible MOBO and it did come with SATA cables so could I buy that 320GB hard drive and put it where my old one was and just connect the SATA cable to it and be ready to go? thanks
Both of those drives look great, it's just up to your preference now since the specs are pretty much identical (they are both sata 2 aswell which is potentially twice as fast as standard sata, although you are not likely to see that much difference in practise but good to have anyway). Read a few reviews and decide for yourself which you will go for, I would think either is fine unless users have reported particular problems with one. Both are good brands. Yes sata is better to use than IDE for a few reasons, a bit faster, less clutter with cabling, much easier to connect/disconnect. Couple of things you need to know, first you usually have to install the sata drivers for your motherboard, these will be easily available for download at the manufacturers site. Usually these will be put on a floppy disk and when you are installing windows (xp anyway, I never installed vista so don't know the procedure) it will prompt you to install sata or raid drivers if you need to right at the start, it asks you to press F6, when you do that have the disk with the drivers in and it will find it and do it all automatically, then it can see the sata disk that you want to put your fresh installation on and it will continue as normal. You then specify the size of the first partition you want to create and so on, remember, if you want to creat a seperate partition for windows and program files you will have to set this manually as windows setup by default assumes you want to partition the whole drive in one big c: drive. As you know this is not the most efficient way to install an os so you will need to put in the size of the c: partition you want to creat in MB, for instance, 50gb would be 51200mb, since 1024mb is 1gb. Once that is done you can use disk management in windows to partition the remaining free space on the drive into your e: (for example) drive and so on.
