I would like to upgrade from a single 120 gb sata hd to dual 80 gb sata drives. I am using an Intel D865PERLL board P4 prescott proc. 512x2 kingston ddr memory.I would like to get an external enclosure for my current 120gb hd. what is a good way to migrate the program files to the new drives. I am running windows xp sp2. My current board only supports 2 sata drives. I would like to be able to keep all of the programs I have installed, any help wiould be appreciated.
Hey! If the data you would like to transfer is not very large, you can use the Copy/Paste in Windows. This is a little slow but if you get USB 2.0 external case and the board is compatible it should be ok. You could also use Norton Ghost which can be faster and takes one click for gigs of data.
Hey I forgot to mention that you can use the backup utility in XP also. Just backup your disk and pick the new disk(s) as the destination. When you have to recover the data, recover on the new disk(s). When you start the utility it will give you some indication of the time required. Also, Raid 0 has no fault tolerance so if you do run into problems with one of the disks, you could lose your data. It is a good idea to enable SMART on the disks--it will decrease performance but will warn you of impending disk problems.
If you are going to be doing this "a lot" then perhaps a disk imaging program is what you need/want Something like Norton Ghost works very well
How does norton ghost work, and will my programs have to be re-installed.I have windows XP Pro running on my 120 gig hard drive. The plan is to install two 80 gig hard drives.I would like to use the 120 gig as an external drive, as my board only supports two sata drives.Can I transfer the operating system with the norton or will it need to be re-installed on the new drives.
ghost works by copying everything from 1 drive to another drive as long as there is room on the 2nd drive, other words if your 120gig is full & try to load onto a 80gig won't work, it's just like making clones
