Best method of replacing C: drive

  • Thread starter Thread starter bdealhoy
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bdealhoy

My old C; drive (win 95, then 98 then ME) has finally ran out of space.
Lots of applciaitons installed that I don';t want to loose or would be
a total pain re-installing.

I'm also think that it's time to shift to XP Pro.

What is the best sequence of doing this?

xcopy /e/h VERSUS GHOST?
 
My old C; drive (win 95, then 98 then ME) has finally ran out of space.
Lots of applciaitons installed that I don';t want to loose or would be
a total pain re-installing.

I'm also think that it's time to shift to XP Pro.

What is the best sequence of doing this?

xcopy /e/h VERSUS GHOST?
Click to expand...

Put up with the pain and buy yourself a new big HDD, install XP Pro
fresh to a large NTFS partition (assuming your mb supports large
HDD's) then install your old favourite apps again. It'll be less
painful for you that way in the long run. XP Pro needs 2gb of HDD
space alone. Doing an upgrade install and then converting the HDD to
NTFS is not the same as doing a fresh install to an NTFS partition.
Many drivers need to be XP specific so it is best to do it all from
scratch. It'll only take you a day or two. :-)
 
Put up with the pain and buy yourself a new big HDD, install XP Pro
fresh to a large NTFS partition (assuming your mb supports large
HDD's) then install your old favourite apps again. It'll be less
painful for you that way in the long run. XP Pro needs 2gb of HDD
space alone. Doing an upgrade install and then converting the HDD to
NTFS is not the same as doing a fresh install to an NTFS partition.
Many drivers need to be XP specific so it is best to do it all from
scratch. It'll only take you a day or two. :-)
Click to expand...

Definitely get a new hard disk. You can use Western Digital's Data
Lifeguard to clone the disk from your old one.

Then, if you don't want to waste a day or two, use In-Place Upgrade or
its equivalent for XP. Then get several Registry cleaners to clean out
the crap.

Do some research on the Microsoft support site.


--

Map of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy
http://home.houston.rr.com/rkba/vrwc.html

"The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers."
--William Shakespeare; Henry VI, Act IV, Scene II
 
Good advice.
Definitely get a new hard disk. You can use Western Digital's Data
Lifeguard to clone the disk from your old one.

Then, if you don't want to waste a day or two, use In-Place Upgrade or
its equivalent for XP. Then get several Registry cleaners to clean out
the crap.
Click to expand...

Forget upgrading ME to XP, especially if he started with 95-98.
Do some research on the Microsoft support site.
Click to expand...
You are the one who should do some research.
 
My old C; drive (win 95, then 98 then ME) has finally
ran out of space. Lots of applciaitons installed that I
don';t want to loose or would be a total pain re-installing.
Click to expand...
I'm also think that it's time to shift to XP Pro.
Click to expand...
What is the best sequence of doing this?
Click to expand...

It is generally better to re install rather
than upgrading over such a long series.

It isnt as hard with XP because you can use the Files and Settings
Transfer Wizard in XP to move the data files and settings from the
old drive to the new XP install. You will however need to install all
the programs you want to keep on the new XP system. The Wizard
just moves the data files and settings, not the programs themselves.
xcopy /e/h VERSUS GHOST?
Click to expand...

xcopy isnt very satisfactory at all. I dont like ghost much, but ghost
2003 will do the job of copying the current ME install to the new hard
drive and you can then upgrade to XP once you have done that if you
dont want to go the better route of a clean install of XP + Wizard.

You cant use Ghost 9, the currently buyable version of ghost with
ME, but it does have ghost 2003 included, the previous version.

I prefer Acronis True Image over Ghost and it does a rather better
job of cloning the ME install to the new drive and is better once you
have your XP installed either way for safety backups etc.

Some hard drives do come with a ute that allows you to copy the
contents of the old drive to the new one, but they dont work that
well most of the time and they arent useful for later backups.
 
Definitely get a new hard disk. You can use Western Digital's
Data Lifeguard to clone the disk from your old one.
Click to expand...

But as you found, its got problems.
Then, if you don't want to waste a day or two,
use In-Place Upgrade or its equivalent for XP.
Click to expand...

You've mangled that completely. You cant use In-Place Upgrade
to move from ME to XP, you just use the XP upgrade to do that.

In-Place Upgrade is used to move XP
from one set of hardware to another.
Then get several Registry cleaners to clean out the crap.
Click to expand...

Pity some of those are much too aggressive and you really
need to know what you are doing to fix what they have deleted
that you wished they hadnt. Its unlikely that someone who
needs to ask the original question would be able to do that.
Do some research on the Microsoft support site.
Click to expand...

Makes a lot more sense to ask here, and he has done that.
 
You're the moron who said use repair (in place upgrade) for upgrading ME to
XP.

Keep trying Boob, you might eventually get something right for a change.
 
You're the moron who said use repair (in place upgrade) for upgrading ME to
XP.
Click to expand...

LOL.

I was not referring to ME specifically. Only a real moron would run ME
to begin with.
Keep trying Boob, you might eventually get something right for a change.
Click to expand...

<yawn>

--

Map of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy
http://home.houston.rr.com/rkba/vrwc.html

"The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers."
--William Shakespeare; Henry VI, Act IV, Scene II
 
My old C; drive (win 95, then 98 then ME) has finally ran out of space.
Lots of applciaitons installed that I don';t want to loose or would be
a total pain re-installing.

I'm also think that it's time to shift to XP Pro.

What is the best sequence of doing this?

xcopy /e/h VERSUS GHOST?
Click to expand...

Xcopy doesn't get you a bootable system in place. Ghost does.

One approach would be to get your new drive, make two partitions on it,
ghost my existing disk over to one of them, then install XP on the other.
That would give you a dual-boot system on which you could work immediately
on 98 and finish your XP installation at your leisure.

If you get a retail-boxed copy of XP then it should be able to do an upgrade
installation as well, which in principle carries over your Windows 98
applications and settings and whatnot--it doesn't get you a perfectly
optimized system but it's not the disaster that many claim either--there
are some applications that an upgrade installation can't deal with and it
should give you a list of those and give you an opportunity to do something
about them before it starts making changes. The downside on this is that
if it does hose up your system, which occasionally happens, then you _have_
to reinstall everything before you can use the system.

Another method that can work but is a bit risky is to install XP to a
separate folder on the same disk with Windows 98. The downside here is
that 98 and XP share the same "Program Files" folder--if you have an
application that uses different files for XP and 98 then it's going to
break under one of them if you use that approach--if you install XP to a
second partition then its Program Files etc will all go on that partition
and not the one with 98. I find that this works very smoothly--the
doomsayers talk about applications that will install only to drive C but I
haven't encountered one of those in a very long time.
 
You just called the original poster a "real moron". Pretty obvious why no one
takes you idiotic advice.
 
I was not referring to ME specifically. Only a real moron would run ME
to begin with.
Click to expand...

Have you ever actually ran ME? I find it funny that the people that
actually trash ME are people that never actually used it. I have two
PC's, one with XP and one with ME. I could put Win2000Pro on it if I
wanted but that would defeat the purpose of having a game machine for
those odd games that need Win98/ME. Plus with ME I get system restore,
auto winzip, pendrive recognition etc. Oh, and it runs just as well as
Win98SE did for me so I don't know what all the fuss was about ME
being such shit. Guess I must have the right combo of hardware and
drivers on that PC. <shrug>.
 
Definitely get a new hard disk. You can use Western Digital's Data
Lifeguard to clone the disk from your old one.

Then, if you don't want to waste a day or two, use In-Place Upgrade or
its equivalent for XP. Then get several Registry cleaners to clean out
the crap.

Do some research on the Microsoft support site.
Click to expand...

That'll take a day or two anyway so he may as well do it the right way
and start from scratch.
 
-the
doomsayers talk about applications that will install only to drive C but I
haven't encountered one of those in a very long time.
Click to expand...

I've bought a couple of games that will only run if installed to their
default folder in /Program Files/ , so it does happpen. Thx to the
clueless programmers out there. It's a real piss off because it means
you have to make sure that you have a very large C: partition these
days. Some games are now also defaulting their save game files and
config files to your Documents folder no matter where you install the
game to. Their thinking is that they are saving you from losing your
save game files and config files if you uninstall the game but they
are also filling up your C: partition at the same time. On Win98 it
used to be that I kept C: fairly small just for the OS and put
everything else on other partitons but now I have a 130gb C: partition
because of this default behavoir. I know there is a way to move My
Documents to another default location but with a 130gb partition I
don't need to.
 
I've bought a couple of games that will only run if installed to
their default folder in /Program Files/ , so it does happpen.
Click to expand...

And installation to other than the default can never be as
thoroughly tested, so it can bit when the uninstall fails etc too.
Thx to the clueless programmers out there. It's a real
piss off because it means you have to make sure that
you have a very large C: partition these days.
Click to expand...

I've basically cut to the chase on that and dont attempt
to separate apps and the OS. You have to reinstall
most of the apps if you reinstall the OS anyway.
Some games are now also defaulting their save game
files and config files to your Documents folder no matter
where you install the game to. Their thinking is that they
are saving you from losing your save game files and
config files if you uninstall the game
Click to expand...

Bloody primitive, like with most games.
but they are also filling up your C: partition at the same time.
On Win98 it used to be that I kept C: fairly small just for the
OS and put everything else on other partitons but now I have
a 130gb C: partition because of this default behavoir. I know
there is a way to move My Documents to another default
location but with a 130gb partition I don't need to.
Click to expand...

And its got some real irritations if you do move it.
 
I think the best advice anyone could give would be don't bother, upgrade
your hardware. You don't tell us what your hardware is. I still run a
Pentium 233 that I bought just a month before Win 98 came out. It was
pretty typical of a consumer machine then, 32 Mb of memory was typical. So
if you started life with Win95 chances are you hardware will not be up to
running XP.

You could still benefit from a bigger disk. I started with a 3Gb disk, then
to 12Gb and then to 40Gb. 3 to 12 was OK but there was a problem in some
award BIOS around then and I had to Flash the BIOS to handle the 40Gb disk.
I tried to put the 12 Gb in a P133 - also Win95 era - but it wouldn't go -
there was limit around 8Gb in many BIOS around that time. I recently tried
an 80Gb but no luck.

I recently tried to put an 80 Gb in a P350 for a friend and no luck (Award
BIOS). There is a jumper on some disks out there that can limit the disk to
32Gb for backward compatibility but I didn't try this. I just went for
second hand 15Gb. On the other hand a Compaq of similar specs handles the
80Gb OK.

If you do go for just a disk upgrade be prepared to try different
combinations and maybe settle for second hand. You will get a performance
improvement due to various factors, Bigger disk cache, faster disk, bigger
cluster size in the file system and just the more space means it's easier to
find free space. You can just copy most of the file system from with
windows except for some windows files which you can do at command prompt,
then do a SYS D: or whatever but maybe it's a bit tricky unless you know
what you are doing. Best to do when you original system is not C: but that
requires another system to run from. I guess you'd be on a quick learning
curve
 
I think the best advice anyone could give would be don't bother, upgrade
your hardware. You don't tell us what your hardware is. I still run a
Pentium 233 that I bought just a month before Win 98 came out. It was
pretty typical of a consumer machine then, 32 Mb of memory was typical. So
if you started life with Win95 chances are you hardware will not be up to
running XP.

You could still benefit from a bigger disk. I started with a 3Gb disk, then
to 12Gb and then to 40Gb. 3 to 12 was OK but there was a problem in some
award BIOS around then and I had to Flash the BIOS to handle the 40Gb disk.
I tried to put the 12 Gb in a P133 - also Win95 era - but it wouldn't go -
there was limit around 8Gb in many BIOS around that time. I recently tried
an 80Gb but no luck.

I recently tried to put an 80 Gb in a P350 for a friend and no luck (Award
BIOS). There is a jumper on some disks out there that can limit the disk to
32Gb for backward compatibility but I didn't try this. I just went for
second hand 15Gb. On the other hand a Compaq of similar specs handles the
80Gb OK.
Click to expand...
If you do go for just a disk upgrade be prepared to try
different combinations and maybe settle for second hand.
Click to expand...

Or understand what you are doing.
You will get a performance improvement due to various factors,
Bigger disk cache, faster disk, bigger cluster size in the file system
and just the more space means it's easier to find free space.
Click to expand...
You can just copy most of the file system from with windows
except for some windows files which you can do at command
prompt, then do a SYS D: or whatever but maybe it's a bit
tricky unless you know what you are doing.
Click to expand...

And you clearly dont on that.
Best to do when you original system is not C:
but that requires another system to run from.
I guess you'd be on a quick learning curve
Click to expand...

Or he can ask for and get a good list of how to do it.
 
Fisher said:
I've bought a couple of games that will only run if installed to their
default folder in /Program Files/ , so it does happpen.
Click to expand...

If you install XP on drive D: then the default folder in Program Files will
be on D, so that's not an issue.
Thx to the
clueless programmers out there. It's a real piss off because it means
you have to make sure that you have a very large C: partition these
days.
Click to expand...

Actually, you need to make sure you have a very large system partition.
That partition does not have to be drive C.
Some games are now also defaulting their save game files and
config files to your Documents folder no matter where you install the
game to.
Click to expand...

GOOD. That is what the programmers are _supposed_ to do.
Their thinking is that they are saving you from losing your
save game files and config files if you uninstall the game
Click to expand...

Or perhaps they're recognizing that the days when they can put files
wherever they want to are numbered and they are starting to put them in the
one place that they can reasonably expect a user account to have access?
That also in principle allows multiple users to play the game and keep
their settings and saved files and whatnot separate.
 
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