Hard Drive Data Swap

  • Thread starter Thread starter zeus
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zeus

I have a vintage 2000 1.2gig Compaq system and am concerned about a hard
drive crash. My daughter's Compaq died and it is about 6 months older than
mine. I put in a new drive, got it up and running but all data was of
course lost. I have a 40gig hdd in my system with 30gigs in use and I'm
afraid of loosing the data and having to go through a reload on my system as
it is a bit different than my daughter's system. My computer came with ME
and an XP upgrade. The upgrade went well and the system does run very well,
at present. If I lost my hdd, I (assume) I would have to install a new one,
install the bios (I do have it) then use my restore disk to bring the system
back to it's ME composure, then go through all the preps and upgrades to
bring it back up to XP. I dread the idea of having to go through all that
and to re-load a lot of software.


So..my question is:
Can I buy a new hdd and install it in this system together with the old hdd
still operating and transfer the data from the old to the new while the old
is still working? I wouldn't mind taking it in but I live some distance
from a major city and I'd would have to bring it down, then come back and
retrieve it and I'd hate to do without my computer for any length of time.
Any help would be appreciated as to if this can be done and how.
Zeus.
 
Hi,

Need a little help here. Did Compaq still create a bios partition in
2000? If so then that may be the stumbling block. If not my guess is that
you could get away with data transfer to a new hdd (as long as the bios will
support the size) using the new hdd maker's data transfer utility. Then
again, even if you do have to install the bios as a separate partition on
the new drive you may then be able to use the data transfer utilty to move
your old drive contents without problems.

To make a "what if.." long story of this I'd probably suggest getting
yourself that second new drive and give it all a shot. You're absolutely
smart to back up your data no matter what. May as well learn something the
easier way than the other while you have the opportunity.
 
zeus said:
I have a vintage 2000 1.2gig Compaq system and am concerned about a hard
drive crash. My daughter's Compaq died and it is about 6 months older than
mine. I put in a new drive, got it up and running but all data was of
course lost. I have a 40gig hdd in my system with 30gigs in use and I'm
afraid of loosing the data and having to go through a reload on my system as
it is a bit different than my daughter's system. My computer came with ME
and an XP upgrade. The upgrade went well and the system does run very well,
at present. If I lost my hdd, I (assume) I would have to install a new one,
install the bios (I do have it) then use my restore disk to bring the system
back to it's ME composure, then go through all the preps and upgrades to
bring it back up to XP. I dread the idea of having to go through all that
and to re-load a lot of software.


So..my question is:
Can I buy a new hdd and install it in this system together with the old hdd
still operating and transfer the data from the old to the new while the old
is still working? I wouldn't mind taking it in but I live some distance
from a major city and I'd would have to bring it down, then come back and
retrieve it and I'd hate to do without my computer for any length of time.
Any help would be appreciated as to if this can be done and how.
Click to expand...

If you get the same kind of hard drive you can usually install it in the
computer nad run the free program you can download from their web site (may
come with the drive if you get the boxed version vers the plain drive). The
program will make an exect duplicate in about one to two hours .

I am not sure how XP will react if you get a differant brand or bigger
drive. I run win 98 and just installed a 80 meg drive to replace the 40 meg
dirve. I have the 40 meg partitioned into several segments. I just told it
to make the last drive letter of the new drive bigger. It copied the data
just fine for the drive.

I keep a drive with the C partiton in a removable tray and just pop it in to
back up the hard drive whne I have new programs installed. It has saved me
a couple of times when I had a hard drive crash and a something like a virus
cruppted the data on the hard drive.
 
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