Hi!Actually on my pc i have an ide 80gb hard disk which is partitioned into two equally,drive c on which is installed my OS together with my programs i use.However i'm near getting a new SATA 320gb hard disk which i'm going to use in my same pc to replace my actual 80gb hard disk. So my question is,is there a way for me to install it in my pc without the need to reinstall my OS(Windows XP service pack 2)and all the programs i use?Like copying the drive C of the actual hard disk to the new SATA hard disk and if it is possible,to know if i can copy it on a larger partition rather than the original partition which is a little bit less than 40gb(38.1gb more precisely)in size?Or should it be copied on a same sized partition? And another thing if all of the above are possible is to know if it will work flawlessly or will there be any risk when use(like crashing,etc..)?Or is it better to make a fresh installation of the OS and the programs,which is quite a big work for me to do. Thanks in advance for any comment. Vincent.
I think you should install a fresh copy of windows, it is always good to reformat every 6 months anyways. Before buying the new hard drive make sure your motherboard supports SATA, also there a 2 different settings for SATA either 150 or 300. If your motherboard can handle SATA300 set it to that. You can turn your old hard drive into a slave and either keep everything on there or transfer it over to the new one once everything is installed. Having new hard drive with fresh windows OS is the failsafe way to go Good luck
Thanks a lot for the advice chubbyInc,i think i'm gonna follow that,that's the wisest and as you said,failsafe thing to do.But one more thing i would like to ask you,my motherboard doesn't support SATA 300 but only the one which is 1.5Gb/s,and the hard drive i'm getting is a maxtor SATA2(which i guess is the same thing as SATA 300),i think i've read somewhere that any hard disk which is SATA2 can also be set as SATA 1.5Gb/s by just putting the jumper in and if someone wants it to be SATA2 then just need to remove that jumper.Can you please confirm if this holds true because i don't want to get a brand new hard disk that i cannot use. Thanks again. Vincent.
starting over takes a much longer time but really is the best method. You can put the sata in there and use a drive clone program to copy everything on the other drive to it. How well it would work i am not sure as i have not used one.
Yes there is a jumper setting to switch between either SATA150 or SATA300. Leave the jumper in and it should be SATA150.
