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First time dealing with multiple HDs, some questions.

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Gawd
Joined
Mar 15, 2002
Messages
876
Well I know lots about computers after building my own rigs for the past couple of years, however I have never had the need to use more than one hard drive until now. My current 80 GB hard drive is filling up, so I am going to purchase a new one. I don't anticipate using up another 80 GB hard drive, so I am probably just going to buy a 74GB raptor for the increased load times it will offer (It's either a raptor or a 250 GB drive again, but I think the raptor would be worth the speed increase, feedback?). Anyhow, my main question is what should I do with my current drive. I will load the os on the new drive (if I get the raptor), and then use the current drive for music/pictures. After I install windows on the raptor, will I be able to access the current drive even though it will have its own copy of windows on it? Also, should I transfer everything to the new drive, then format the old one, and then copy everything back? I don't mind the time it may take to do all this, I just want optimal performance. Any feedback/suggestions are welcome!
 
The files will still be on the second drive, whether they're accessable or not depends on your specific windows config. If you're logged in as a plain user and trying to access administrator files on the old drive it probobably will give you issues. Most of the time this isn't a big deal, as worst case you login as admin and take ownership of the files in question and possibly dole ownership out to the peon account(s). As for copying files over, reformatting, then copying them back, there's not a whole lot of reason to do this aside from cleanliness. I really hate having old/unused system files lying around.
 
If you install the new OS to the new HDD while that old one is in the system
its likely youll create a dual boot, and if that where to happen, if you removed the older drive later youd loose access to the new HDD
now if your old HDD had a system partition (that is the boot partition with the ntldr and boot.ini, it would be marked as the system partition currently in Disk Management) that was small enough to clone (not copy) over, youd be able to boot to either independently through selecting the boot order in the BIOS

you could also do this by removing the old drive and attaching the new one and then installing the OS, then reattaching the old HDD

and if you wanted to, you could then edit the boot.ini in both OSs so that you could dual boot from either, eliminating the need to access the boot order in the BIOS yet maintaing their independence if one dies

as Snugglebear mentioned there will be permissions issues (unless you clone)
in which case youd need to disable simple file sharing before taking ownership of files and folders

having a parallel install makes repairing an OS a breeze as you can "look sideways at it"
nothing you cant do with other tools, but generally its a command prompt, and you might be more comfortable with a familiar GUI
 
So pretty much, I should remove the old hd, format and install the new one, then just add the old one and leave it as is? I then if I wish I could establish a dual boot system in case I ever need repairs?
 
yup
HOW TO: Edit the Boot.ini File in Windows XP

and since you have a parallel install
it would be childs play to edit the "other" boot.ini from the current one, then test it by changing the boot order in the BIOS to see if it works
if so then just copy it and repeat as it doesnt see the BIOS boot order and theyd be the same if Im not mistaken **
(all a point of view from inside the OS as to which is the 1st and which is the second)
Ive actually done that but cant remember if that is correct, if not just switch back and try again :p

** ( Im a little hazy in the specifics, actually I was running alot more installs than that with true dual boots on both drives, so I had quad entries on each ini, back when I was playing with all sorts of dual booting and boot managers, never killed anything with a strict dual boot (or cross access with quad entries), but screwed the pooch a couple of times with boot managers, they get alot more complex, and enable you to exceed the 4 primary (or 3 primary and an 1 extended w\ its own logicals) partition limit in Windows (per physical drive)
 
if it were me, i would take the old hard drive out and seperate the new hard drive (in the case of the raptor) into 2 partitions. the first partition would be around 5GB - 10GB, and would be used only for installing the operating system. then the other partition would use up the rest of the free space on that drive for installing all your programs and everything else.

once that is all set up, just put your old drive back in the system, copy anything you want to save from that drive to the new one, format the old one clean, then use the it for storage, and just copy all your stuff back over from the new drive.

this will make it so much easier anytime you get ready to reinstall the OS, as you will only have to reformat the OS partition, keeping all your program files intact, such as saved games, individual program config settings, etc.

and it would be a good idea after you get the system redone the way you want it, to make a ghost image of the OS partition....that way, you don't even need to run through the same tired Windows install process every time, just takes about 5 - 10 minutes to reload from the ghost image, and all your stuff is already installed and should run fine, since you will have saved all the program files on a seperate partition
 
the registry has nothing to do with keeping the actual program files intact, just some settings within said programs....but as you said, if you reload it from a ghost image, those registry settings are also reloaded, so it's all good to go.

the only things you would need to reinstall is anything that was installed after the ghost image was created, but that would take a whole lot less time than reinstalling windows from scratch, then also reinstalling all the programs
 
its a strategy that Ive used on occassion
but I see guys in here daily with broken aps too
when I ask , so where is your registry backup? they are like what? :p

I just keep the aps with the OS, and image the whole thing for rapid restore in need
(which is rare) of course I also keep copies of the original aps in several locations in need
(RAID 5 , hard media ect)

Ghosting is worth it to me just for my security protocol
 
Ice Czar said:
its a strategy that Ive used on occassion
but I see guys in here daily with broken aps too
when I ask , so where is your registry backup? they are like what? :p

I just keep the aps with the OS, and image the whole thing for rapid restore in need
(which is rare) of course I also keep copies of the original aps in several locations in need
(RAID 5 , hard media ect)

Ghosting is worth it to me just for my security protocol
Click to expand...


what's this rej-is-tree of which you speak? :D
 
LOL, why
%systemroot%/WINNT/system32/config
of course :p

but on my machine Ive got the last 30 boot time copies at C:/BK
 
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