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Moving a partition of WinXP down for Vista
- Thread starter provoko
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DeaconFrost
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My question would be why? In setting up a dual boot system (little reason to do so anymore, but that's another topic), you always have the older Os first, followed by the newer OS on a separate drive or partition.
Just follow the same old dual boot method that's been in use for a decade now. Clear off a blank part of the drive, leave it unformatted, and then boot from the Vista DVD. Point it to the open, unformatted section, and when finished, you'll have a dual booting system.
Just follow the same old dual boot method that's been in use for a decade now. Clear off a blank part of the drive, leave it unformatted, and then boot from the Vista DVD. Point it to the open, unformatted section, and when finished, you'll have a dual booting system.
DeaconFrost
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That isn't much of a factor anymore, certainly not like it used to be. In theory it made a difference, but not in actuality. If you want Vista at the "fastest" part of the drive, then just load Vista on the PC and be done with it. Or, if you have some reason to dual boot, even now, get a second physical drive for Vista.
But why would I do that when I have a 320gb hard drive?
Am I on the right forum? I thought I came to [H]ardForums not [E]asyWayOutForums?
If theres a risk, i'll take it, if its difficult, i'll get through it, I just need advice on doing it [R]ight.
So far i'm planning on using a linux live cd called GParted to shrink and move any partition. It can also make backups, so I'll be safe. GParted does mention that my WinXP OS has a registry entry on disk location (i forgot the exact terminology) and that I should delete that part if anything goes wrong, WinXP will rebuild it.
If no one has any information on what i'm trying to do, then I will post my own experience with it so [H]ard members can benefit from.
Wish me luck.
DeaconFrost
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I'll ignore the cockiness from the rest of your post. You asked for how to do it right, and that's what I gave you. I also tried explaining that you won't really see much of a difference in performance between physical areas of the drive. That, once again, is mainly in theory, and doesn't translate into actual performance gains.
You are wanting to set up a very typical dual boot scenario, plain and simple, and that is what I described for you. If you had all the answers, and wanted to insist on overcomplicating things, why did you even create the thread in the first place?
I used western digital data lifegaurd tools to copy my xp partition on to a smaller drive before my vista install on another pc is that what your looking for? yes a data copy will work just fine just make sure you set it up to transfer hidden files as well... i moved xp to a smaller hdd that way i could keep the bigger hdd for my new main os so i see what your getting at. just make sure you copy it to the same type of hdd ( IDE to IDe and SATA to SATA) otherwise your going to have problems with your install of xp.. other than that its easy either way you look at it
But why would I do that when I have a 320gb hard drive?
Am I on the right forum? I thought I came to [H]ardForums not [E]asyWayOutForums?
If theres a risk, i'll take it, if its difficult, i'll get through it, I just need advice on doing it [R]ight.
So far i'm planning on using a linux live cd called GParted to shrink and move any partition. It can also make backups, so I'll be safe. GParted does mention that my WinXP OS has a registry entry on disk location (i forgot the exact terminology) and that I should delete that part if anything goes wrong, WinXP will rebuild it.
If no one has any information on what i'm trying to do, then I will post my own experience with it so [H]ard members can benefit from.
Wish me luck.
If you really wanted to be "[H]ard", we suggest you to get another hard drive and install Vista on it. There's absolutely no sense whatsoever in getting Vista installed on the first partition of your hard drive and moving your XP partition "down". You're going to suffer in performance.
As a matter of fact, partitioning your hard drive leads to more hard drive wear and tear, and leaves BOTH OSes susceptible to total loss should something happen to the hard drive.
Not to mention the fact that Vista is going to control your boot loader from now on. That's right, no more XP based boot loader if you plan to dual boot with Vista.
The "[E]asyWayOut" you mentioned is the way you are trying to do it. So get real, man up, and get another hard drive for your Vista installation. You'll thank us later for the advice.
No you didn't describe anything to me. You told me to buy a new hard drive and left me with that. Thanks, that helped a lot... I don't know what could be worse, maybe telling me to buy another computer, thats way simpler than dual booting.
I didn't have all the answers, thats why I came to post. But since I didn't get any answers I decided to go do it on my own and post back real answers.
You don't make any sense either. I have 210gb free on my 320gb hard drive. Getting another hard drive is wasteful of my money and hard drive space and it'll just add to my case temperatures and noise.
Everything else you said ajm786 isn't true or highly debatable, and really we'd need to start a new topic to address each one you mentioned.
Okay, lets get real, back to topic. I succeeded in moving my OS partition, but with a few problems.
GParted was great to use. It's a linux based partition program that can be made into a live CD, which I used. It was easy to use and didn't need any restarts like partition magic does.
I first shrank WinXP partition to 60gbs and then moved it to an old 80gb HDD for back up. Then I copied it back to my 320gb to save time vs partition to partition copy; I put it at the end of the drive.
Since I don't have Vista yet I used the same WinXP cd to install a fresh copy at the beginning of my 320gb drive. After first boot I changed my fresh copy of WinXP's boot.ini to boot up my old WinXP.
I highlighted the important parts in red, the last line is to boot up my old WinXP where it sits on the 3rd partition of my 320gb harddrive hence "partition(3)".
Here were the problems:
The first thing I noticed is that my Front WinXP (fresh install) showed I was on drive K and my Back WinXP (original partition) was on drive C. Until I switched to my Back WinXP (original partition) which told me I was now on drive H and the Front WinXP was on drive C.
I thought that was really strange, the only thing I could think of was to use drive mapper to change all references of C to H. That did the trick, all my games & settings (even wallpaper and window/taskbar positions) work on my old WinXP as if I never moved it.
I can't explain the drive letter swapping, maybe someone else can, and give advice on how to prevent it next time or even fix it now, especially since I'm on drive H using my old windows xp. Haha.
All in all, it was pretty easy, I didn't even need to use my backup.
Thanks tokey43074 for suggesting another tool and providing your own experience.
There's bound to be subjectiveness in almost any post, but you need to separate fact from your opinion. Everything I stated is certainly not "not true or highly debatable."
1. You obviously don't have Vista yet. Therefore you wouldn't know about the boot loader management being controlled by Vista. I stated this in my previous post. FACT.
2. Partitioning hard drives do lead to more wear and tear and a decrease in performance. I'll let someone else explain this. I used to do it myself, and stopped a long time ago.
3. Both OSes are now going to be susceptible to total loss should something happen to your hard drive. You lose 2 instead of 1. FACT.
Fine, you want to use the rest of your hard drive space, and you partition it. Bravo for learning something new with moving the partition "down" as you say you want to do. But that's all you're doing. It's a practice in futility. It was absolutely unnecessary to do what you just did, and for the exact reason which you stated:
provoko said:
If anything, being at the OUTER edges of the drive is FASTER than the inner, so, if you want to speak in theory, you're wrong there too. Your statement is the one that merits a new topic to address it, not mine, because the performance difference is NEGLIGIBLE in the real world.
On a side note, does your screen handle have anything to do with your perceived attitude to these forums or the members of these forums?
MrWizard6600
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I'm not a hard drive buff but I'd like to know what you guys mean by slower/faster parts of the drive. The total rpm of the drive is dynamic, meaning it spins faster when you hit the inner sectors and slower when you hit the outer sectors (assuming the same bit-density). So how are read/write speeds or even seek times different at all on different tracks?
There's bound to be subjectiveness in almost any post, but you need to separate fact from your opinion. Everything I stated is certainly not "not true or highly debatable.
On a side note, does your screen handle have anything to do with your perceived attitude to these forums or the members of these forums?
I feel highly provoked when I receive multiple opinions from forum members rather than actual help to my questions. I feel like giving you my screen name for the replies you give me.
Addressing some of the things you said:
1) I've read up on Vista boot loader, its more advanced than boot.ini and should work fine in my situation.
2) Partitioning hard drives is what computer users do. Linux users even more so. As for decrease in performance, in my situation, that doesn't apply. I'm not splitting up OS files, games & programs across different partitions, only splitting OSs with their own separate games, programs & games. They'll be completely isolated for my own use no matter how I want to use them. So Vista partition will have nothing to do with WinXP partition and visa versa. No increased fragmentation or wear and tear.
3) Obviously if I lose my hard drive, I lose both my OSes. But the risk of losing my hard drive doesn't double because I have 2 OSes on it (thats silly). Only one is active at one time, so I don't see your point. But besides, I usually back up my computer files.
When I used the words front of my drive, I'm referring to the outer most edge (the fastest); the back refers to the inner most (the slowest). That's why I'd want Vista on the outer edges. I addressed that at the third post of this thread.
I hope you're satisfied that we've talked about what you want to talk about. And I hope I've shown you that it really doesn't matter in my situation.
To MrWizard6600: The outer edges are faster because the needle can read more data without moving. The inner slower because less data can be read before the needle moving. My hard drive 320gb AAKS reads at 90mb/s for the outer, yet 40mb/s at the inner.
Real world performance is greatly affected at the inner edge. To test, just make a partition at the very end of your drive, unzip something there compared to unzipping something at the front of your drive. The end is much slower. Boot times and game load times are affected too. Mostly installing, copying, and creating is the most beneficial real world gain you get.
Never said it was better or worse. I was letting you know it was there. And you will have issues later trying to wipe the Vista partition unless you install a 3rd party program that will edit the bootloader back to the standard WinXP type bootloader to keep your XP install. Obviously nothing to worry about if you keep Vista.
It'd be great if you would have clarified this from the beginning.
Losing your DATA doubles when you have 2 OSes on it, regardless if one is operational at a time. Anything can happen: viruses, spyware, data corruption, etc. etc. But you stated you backup your files. Good to hear, you'll be doing that a lot.
Once again, clarify. I can't decipher your words if you decide to use them in code. Not a lot of folk refer to "front" and "back" of their hard drives. And to be asinine the 3rd post of this thread (your 2nd) did not do any better to elaborate.
You brought it up in this thread, we responded. I take it you weren't expecting to elicit a response?
The idea of partitioning is not a bad one at all. But in the context that you wanted to do it in is a waste of time. Vista is such a beast that that tiny little (almost negligible) performance you gain by having the OS on the outer track is going to be eaten up like next to nothing. You'll find that it probably wasn't worth the effort.