Transferring to another HD?

lukin

I have two hard drives on my PC, one is brand new and the other will be three years old in July.
Nearly everything is stored on the older drive (there's nothing on the new one yet).
I want to transfer everything on the older drive to the new one and then ditch the old drive. Can anyone tell me how to do this?
I know I could do it by re-installing Windows on the new drive, setting it as master and then transferring everything on the old drive (setting it as slave) but that sounds like too much hassle. Surely there must be an easier way? Is there a program I can download anywhere to do it?
(I am using Windows 98)
Another thing;The new hard drive is supposed to have 40 GB but there's only 32 GB showing up on its properties. Either someone's pulled a fast one on me or I've done something wrong myself when I installed it.
Would appreciate any thoughts.

stereo_steve

Why don't you just keep the two disks in? You could move all your files to the new drive but keep the operating system on the old drive.

Also I'm not sure on this but I don't think there would be a problem if you transfered everything onto the new drive and removed the old. You computer would just start up see the C: drive and load normally. You could always try this. If it doesn't work, you could just put everything back the way it was. You wouldn't have deleted anything.

If you don't want your old drive, I'd love it. I only have 5gigs and its very cramped at the moment!

po0k

Just format it, install the OS and copy the savegames et,.c accross. Your windows will run faster (for WIN98SE).
If you ahve loads of proggies to install rejoice! you can set them upnicely provided you haven'tmindlessly thrown away the discs
Then format the old hard drive and fill it with MP3s and DiVXes.....

Gerry

Search for disk cloning software on the net. (Or buy driveimage or norton ghost or something) You should be able to make an exact byte for byte image of the old drive, and transfer that to the new drive. Everything will run faster then. Doing a clean install of windows is probably the better option though. There will be less clutter, and windows will run faster.

SantaHoe

I've done something similar before... Win98 seems happy enough to be just copied from one drive to another, as long as you make sure the target drive is bootable... a sys c: usualy sorts that (assuming your new drive is assigned as C:).
If you're trying this though, make sure you use Copy instead of Move, just incase anything goes wrong

_CreeD_

...And that you do it in DOS using Xcopy's system/hidden file copy switches.
Ghost is neater though, and it's very handy to have an image of the system if you need to reinstall.

zAbbo

This is a common query and one that we all come across. The answer is there are 8 bits in a byte, 1024 bytes in a megaByte, 1048 megabytes in a Gigabyte. if you divided 40gb(40000 MB) by 1048 you get the true Disk size which is 32gb. Manufactures use the rule that there are 1000 bytes in a megabyte and 1000 megeabytes in a gigabyte. Confusing isn`t it. If you saw 2 hard drives for sale one showing 32gb and the other showing 40gb, you would obviosly go for the 40gb even tho they are actually the same size. I hope this helps. As for your 2 hard drive query, although it could be some bother I recommend that you keep the two hard drives, Install windows on the new one(a fresh install is always a good idea on a new hard drive(make sure the File system is the same as the small hard drive for compatability.FAT32)copy the files from the old one to the new one. I`m not a big fan of drive images, but the above replys are an option. Also a 3gb hard drive is handy for swoping around large files(using it as a slave). e.g copying files from a friends pc etc. I hope this sheds some light on the subject.

_CreeD_

Theory is correct, the maths are wrong. It'd be cut down to about 37Gb if it was just a matter of the 1024 rule.

zAbbo

Sorry I can`t count for ****, but hey i did give some good advice

SantaHoe

Originally posted by _CreeD_
...And that you do it in DOS using Xcopy's system/hidden file copy switches.

I think last time I did it, I was duel-booting '98 and 2K... was just a simple matter of drag & drop from win2k
Can't remember if it ever worked from win98.
Personally I'd just use both drives, and leave the OS where it is... unless the new disk is much faster of course.

zAbbo

Leave the 2 drives as they are, but use the 3gb drive as the swop file, You may see a speed increase as the OS uses the smaller drive as its swop file. It`s an option alright. You could fresh install on the new one(master) then copy the files across from the old one(slave) then format the old one and set it as the swop file(virtual memory). Personally i`d go with win2k(better resource management). Dual booting is an option as well, if you want full backward compatability with games. The 3gb drive could be used as backup and you could backup some files on this(if you don`t have any other backup solution). The method I use is: Anything i install or download goes onto my second hard drive that way when the inevitable OS crash comes i still have all my orginal install files. What does anyone else think.............

PiE

How would one go about designating the smaller drive as a Swap Drive? And is the drive still useable for storage?

zAbbo

In WIN2k goto Control Panel > System > Advanced > Performance Options > Virtual Memory > Change . Then set the amount of Hard Drive Space you want to use as the swop file.

If you have a 3gb Hard Drive and assign 500mb as the swop file then you have 2.5gb as storage. Windows uses the swop file because you can`t load everything into RAM, so it temporarily holds it on the hard drive, and if you say open MS Word from your C: drive it loads it into RAM, if the swop file is on the C: drive then the Hard Drive can trash around looking for information on two differnt parts of the drive. If the swhop file is on then then Word can be loaded and the swop file is on , the fifference is that it`s accessing 2 different drives not 2 different parts of the same drive. This can sometimes increase performance.

In Win98 Control Panel > System > Performance > Virtual Memory > Let me Assign my own memory(or something)
Then set the min and max.

Hope this helps, If anyone has anything else or has something i left out or missed then post back..............

po0k

wasn't there a cylinder limit on PIO adapters or soemthing?
2GB barrier, 8.2 GB, 32gb, 128GB and so on?
Afaik UDMA100/66 only supports drives under 128GB, unless there's a BIOS fix for the controller or something...
the 128GB limit was one of the 'features' mentioned for Maxtor's UDMA133 spec i think.
Can someone clarify this? i don't ahve a hdd manual to hand atm

PiE

Ah ok, cheers pcirl :]

_CreeD_

After 8Gb the next limit should have been 136Gb (but some older boards did stutter at >32gb).
It'd be worth running FDISK and seeing what it shows the drive as (ie. is there unpartitioned space left).
Also some drive have a jumper setting to limit it's reported size for compatibility.

zAbbo

To increase the performance of virtual memory see here:

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=48803

Saruman

dont know if its too late but download DriveCopy.. its damn handy.. its basically a bootdisk with a gui.. like Ghost but basically all it does is copy everything from one drive to another.. i used it and it works.. you could use xcopy but will have to unattrib all hidden files and use switches to get all the folders and so on.. its easier with one of these little utilities!

Mr. Fancypants

If your going to put the swap file on a different drive make sure the two drives are not on the same IDE cable as your PC cannot read from two devices on the same cable at the same time. So, chances are your PC will run slower as a result.

Correct me if im wrong now.

Saruman

You are right it will be slower there.. though if you have a cdrom and cdrw on the same ide cable you can copy cd to cd... its not advised though because of difficulty.. short answer is yes you can use both at once or you could not do this.. long answer is no only one at a time but its so quick you dont notice it so it seems as both at the same time.. same with a cpu. It can only do one thing at once but is so fast it seems to be doing multiple tasks at once.

lukin

Thanks to everyone for their advice:
stereo_steve, I want to get rid of the old drive completely as I don't trust the thing! Three years is about the average lifetime of a hard drive anyway.
Sorry, but I can't give it to you as I want to keep it in case of emergency!

pcirl.com, I can't believe hard drive manufactures can get away with telling such blatant lies. I mean, 40 gigs means 40 gigs and if you buy one that says "40 GB Hard Drive" that's exactly what you should get. Surely they are breaking the law?

Saruman

I know Lukin.. i have a 60gb drive and its about 57 in reality... though i knew perfectly well this would be the case before i got it being a tech.. does not bother me though.. its not technically false advertising.. they would argue they are rounding it off or something so would get away with it. Such is life

zAbbo

Hard Drive Manufacturing is similar to the record compilation business, if one starts selling HITS 2003 then thats better than one that sells MUSIC 2002 even though they are talking about the same year and after that well everyone jumps on the bandwagan.

It would be interesting to note what size the drive shows up in the BIOS