[no1dc]

I need to copy my old 6.4 gig hard drive(FAT 32) to a 30 gig hard drive(would like to NTFS it). Took it to the local vo-tech that has computer applications classes and they copied it for me(using ghost I believe) but when I got it back to work I had all kinds of errors. I went online and found software(yes I paid for it) called Spotmau. Anyway I proceeded to copy the smaller hard drive to the larger one. The copying itself went well. I booted the computer from the larger hard drive without errors. Went to check the hard drive and what it did was it copied the hard drive but the rest of the 32+gig was not showing up. What I've decided to do was to erase data from the large hard drive(currently in progress 3+ hours) and prepare it for the copying process once again. Evidently I need to partition the hard drive prior to copying the files from the smaller hard drive(how is this accomplished?). I really don't want to do a fresh XP install due to losing all the settings for my office. For some reason it was a royal pain and I don't particularly want to do that again. It's been a while and I don'tknow if I could do it again. How do I partition this hard drive? Should I partition it as one 15 gig(for the copie dfiles and OS) and one 25 gig for the rest? I am going to have to install my office sofware(an old dos program) to the 6 gig fat32 hard drive. The reason I'm having to do this is because my software vendor is "making" me upgrade from my current dos to a windows version of my office software and it will work best on XP. As always any help would be appreciated. TIA Pete

 

[Gene McGill]

Don't worry about eraseing everything if you are going to partition it; everything will be erased automatically. To partition it, you could add it to another computer as another drive, and partion it from disk management in administrative tools in the control panel. You could probably do it from the XP install cd without installing XP, too. One way would be to go thru the repair selection, which I believe opens the command line console app (like DOS), or you could pretend your are installing XP and let setup create the first partion you want, abort setup after it's done formatting it, and then create your second partion once you have it up and running, using disk managenment as decribed above, as your unpartioned space should show up then.

Note: you will need to delete your original partition first, which XP setup( as described aboved) will let you do. Thats when all your data is erased, rather than manually erasing it as you are now doing. Regardless of whether you erase everything or not, you still need to delete that 6gb partition.

 

[slowtalker]

Don't copy anything. Add the old drive to your system as a slave drive like drive d:. All your data is still intact and readable from XP. Then copy what you want or need from drive d:. Use the entire new drive for XP.

 

[no1dc]

Re-reading my post I realize i left this information out. The computer IS running XP Professional on the 6 gig hd. I upgraded it from win98se. The reason I don't want to re-install XP is because it took me a LOOOOONG time to get all the drivers and settings right. I've partitioned and formatted the new drive to 12 gig(D: fat32) drive and 28 gig(E: nfts). I plan to copy the 6 gig to the 12 gig partition then use the 12 gig to boot and leave the smaller 6 gig intact for insurance just in case down the road something goes wrong. I'm just going to unplug it and leave it sit in the computer. I then plan on dragging all my documents onto the E drive uninstalling MS office and re-installing it on the E drive. I plan on doing that with a few other programs, adobe, print shop, nero. I then plan on installing my office software, an ms dos program(via floppy back ups) so I'm ready to convert to XP when my vendor wants. I'm beginning to wonder if this is all worth it! On top of all this I'm still probably going to have to re-register my XP with Microsoft. I know it's a lot of info but like to br through. TIA Pete

 

[shep_77]

I hate to say it but if you upgraded from 98 to XP you probably should be looking at a new machine. I would recommend Acronis True Image for cloning the drive, you can get a trial version that should do what you need. That will be easier than what you described above with moving things around after they are installed. After you have the disk cloned you can run a command that will convert it from FAT32 to NTFS.

 

[slowtalker]

I see all kinds of problems with the scenario you propose. I'm not sure it's possible to elaborate on it all here. Let's say you are able to clone c: onto d: successfully. You just made d: c: for all intents and purposes. You say okay but I'm unplugging the old c: so that will be fine. But Windows was previously configured with the 12gb partition as d: not c:. Your computer may look at the 12gb as c: but Windows will be missing some previously configured partitions. This stuff is fixable if you know what you are doing but based on your original post where you asked about how to partition I'd say you are setting yourself up for problems. When you clone the 6gb onto the 12gb then you may overwrite the partition table on the larger drive. Still the partition table you currently have says: Drive 0: 6gb Primary partition c: fat. Drive 1: 12gb (primary?) d: fat and 18gb extended, logical drive e: ntfs:. After the clone and removal of the old c: you might have Drive 0: 6gb primary c: - missing. New Drive 0: 6-12gb primary formerly d: fat maybe changed to c: and maybe 18gb d: or e: extended. Drive 1: missing. Even if Windows boots successfully on the new drive it's ugly in my mind. Disclaimer: The scenario depicted above is not intended to be 100% technically accurate but is given with the intent to illustrate a point.

I think you'd be better off to wipe the new drive completely. Then do the clone (possibly using your cloning utility to create and expand the the Windows partition) on the new drive, make the old drive a slave, boot the new drive then use Windows disk management to create any additional partitions you may want. At this point you may begin your copies and reinstalls.

Personally I am not a big fan of upgrades. True, you retain your settings and preferences but you also can retain problems. I think you should do a clean XP install on the new drive and spend the time to tweak it. If you do a new install of XP on d: you can still boot the copy of XP that's on c: in case of an emergency such as XP on d: will not boot because of file system errors or a corrupt registry file. You could boot into XP on drive c:. From c: you could do work, run chkdsk on d: to fix errors, recover your files, etc.. Just a thought.

I agree a Windows 98 machine is probably inadequate for XP.

Definitely convert to NTFS.

 

[no1dc]

I think you'd be better off to wipe the new drive completely. Then do the clone (possibly using your cloning utility to create and expand the the Windows partition) on the new drive, make the old drive a slave, boot the new drive then use Windows disk management to create any additional partitions you may want. At this point you may begin your copies and reinstalls.

Personally I am not a big fan of upgrades. True, you retain your settings and preferences but you also can retain problems. I think you should do a clean XP install on the new drive and spend the time to tweak it. If you do a new install of XP on d: you can still boot the copy of XP that's on c: in case of an emergency such as XP on d: will not boot because of file system errors or a corrupt registry file. You could boot into XP on drive c:. From c: you could do work, run chkdsk on d: to fix errors, recover your files, etc.. Just a thought.

quote]

You were right. All kinds of problems. The worst being the inability to get the network working properly and limited hard drive size. Cloned drive only saw 6 gig of the 40 gig hard drive and I didn't know how to let it see the rest. Had lan problems as well, no connectivity with yellow triangle(did not assign ip address).

So after all the frustration cloning I did do a fresh install. Resulted in the onboard ethernet and pci one I installed in it's place BOTH having limited or no connectivity with a yellow triangle with an exclamation point. Couldn't get that resolved. I also couldn't get the network to work or my printer to work. It's hooked up via a parallel to usb cable. Yes the printer is an older epson action laser 1500. I can't do an entire equipment upgrade at this time.

I finally gave up after three attempts re-installed the original 6 gig hard drive(fat32) as the master and formatted(ntfs) the 40 gig and it's the secondary master drive d:

I know just enough to get in trouble as you can tell. What I need it shep to come up for a meal and fix this thing or just live with it and make sure I install anything new on the new hard drive and try and dump some of the unnecessary stuff of the old drive to free up space. Ideally sometime in the future I need some new equipment.

As for the computer handling XP it's a K7S5A with an athlon cpu running at 1500 with 512mb ram. It actually runs well and is very stable but like I explained earlier it's taken a while to get it that way through trial and error. Thanks Pete