Upgrading to a larger hard drive

It is true that GB for GB, an internal drive is cheaper; however, you lose that portability (unless you house it in an aluminum case--I did that to one of my internal). External drives are usually reserved for user data, so performance doesn't really matter.

Since there's not much space, I guess the only choice is internal.

 

It's very easy using properties of "my documents" to move it to another location - in this case, your new drive. Programs such as Itunes typically store their data (the music) in a subfolder of my documents, so all your son's stuff will get moved automatically. If you happen to have one program that continues to store data on the c drive, I don't see that as a big deal. Someday, you'll realize it is doing that and you'll move that program's data to the new drive, presumably using that program's options menu.

I just went through this same exercise - it wasn't difficult - and I'm no expert .

 

A new HD will be noticeably faster than a 5 year old HD. That's the main reason for moving the OS to the new HD.

 

If I may.

I have done what you are speaking of many times. Usually for other people with much the same problem as you. When I can, I talk them into a larger drive. The added space is always a benefit, but more importantly as has been stated here, it is usually faster.

But I do not understand why you do not just stick the current drive in as a slave, and reinstall a fresh OS on the new one. It will undeniably prove to be the fastest running OS of all the methods mentioned. Yes, it is sometimes a pain to be installing all your applications over again. But, imagine how nice it would be to start with a clean slate again. Installing only the things really wanted and probably by this point, those are 'old reliable' type's.

THEN image the drive. Then you will have a nice fresh image to work with for backup purposes. This still leaves the OS on your existing drive, that can either be used via an boot.ini entry, or many bios's now have a boot option for which hdd etc to boot from. I do this all the time, have more than one hdd that has an active OS on it. This is your emergency OS. Imagine you just got the latest virus that wipes your mbr ( everyone I know has gotten that one time or another lol.. not ), you just boot into your old OS and you are back in business temporarily. Of course your data is not safe, but eh, you need a backup plan anyway don't you? lol.

( hear this, if you do a fresh install, NEVER have a drive plugged into the computer that already has a copy of windows on it, it will mess with all your boot.ini's. ALWAYS unplug OS drives before doing a fresh install to a new drive )

As to whether or not you want to partition, maybe a lot in here think partitioning is good. I used to. I did a lot of research on that topic and now choose to just say no. I'll leave that to someone else to agree with or not, just passing it along.

Sul.

 

Sully,

I guess we have opposite approaches to computers. I never install a fresh OS if I have an image to restore. I love partitions, mainly to separate data from the OS as the partitions are backed up differently.

http://www.goodells.net/multiboot/notes.htm#13

 

I did use partitions and images. Until shortly after round IDE cables came out. Seems for some reason that 2 of the 4 new ones that I bought liked to screw up my partition tables. I had 160gb drives in 4 or 5 partitions. Things worked well and then one day, the drives were not there. The bios showed the drive as some cryptic text. Lost all the data across all partitions. I thought the drive was bad. I had this happen to two important data drives. Took awhile to figure out what the issue was because it was not repeatable.

Eventually I said screw this noise. If my harddrive dies, so do all my partitions. What good is my data partition if the drive dies? That is when I started using mirror raid arrays. I have a computer that does nothing but store files. In my main box I have 2 raid 0 and 2 raid 1 arrays. All my data goes to the mirrors. My OS goes on the stripes.

I don't think that having a partition is a bad idea. It is nice to be able to store data on it and still be able to reinstall to the primary partition. I just think that if data integrity is what one is worried about, partitions are definately not the answer. A single drive is not the answer. Never will be. Not if it is important data.

I always try to talk people into 2 harddrives. This way they have a backup OS if needed, and also I try to get them to put important data on the secondary drive. I also write apps for them to keep thier important data organized across both drives. Mirroring the manual way.

I know that you can backup the data for the partitions and restore them. Partition Magic and others do that. But who does that? Just how saavy do we have to be to keep our data from disappearing? I can do it. You probably could. Most peeps in wilders probably could. But the other 95% of users?

Also, I understand you liking the images. It is fast and convenient. However, I don't think there is any question that a fresh installed OS will run the fastest. Even making an image of the new OS is better than just imaging one that has been in use for some time.

Nothing wrong at all with your point of view thats for sure. I just don't implicitly trust my data to it anymore.

Sul.

 

You'll sure need plenty of discs to backup 60 GB

 

Well I was just about to buy the new drive at my local BestBuy, when I noticed it for $30 less on amazon.com!
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000RGDDV0/interactiveda8710-20
I just ordered the drive, so the upgrade will have to wait a few days until I receive it. That will give me more time to think about your ideas and suggestions.

Thanks!

 

Well it's all done, but not without an unexpected issue, so I thought I'd report back should anyone else run into this.

After installing the new 320GB drive my son's Dell Dimension 4550 (running XP SP3) would not recognize more than 137GB! On Dell's support forums, I discovered that problem was his original BIOS which did not provide the necessary '48-bit LBA' support.

Using his Dell service tag, I went to the support page for his model and found a few newer BIOS updates, so I downloaded the latest version (with large drive support). Having never performed a BIOS flash I was quite nervous about doing it, but it went without incident and afterwards the entire 320GB was reported.