On 4 Jun 2009 20:40, Mark wrote in alt.comp.freeware
Franklin said:
Do you have a separate program partition? Is C your system
partition and D where you instal programs to
Yes.
Does the mainboard have native support for PATA and SATA
Yes
Do you intend attaching the 500 SATA via USB?
When copying from the 320 GB? Possibly. What would you do?
A reason for changing the HD is that the 320 GB is beginning to
develop [still minor] problems. I prefer to use it as a spare drive
for non-essential media files and I've got the 500 GB SATA lying
around anyway. That's all.
Mark
If you're getting read/write problems on the 320 GB then you're doing the
right thing although I'm not sure how you know it's the HDD. (I wouldn't
rely on SMART.)
I wouldn't use the USB port at all. I'd do it like this:....
Attach both 320 and 500 direct to the mobo.
Clone the 320 onto the 500. I use $$ware for this so I can't suggest what
freeware to use for cloning. I say "clone" because your setup may
benefit if as much of the MBR as poss gets copied over. (I'm thinking of
some non-standard identifiers MS saves in the MBR but don't bother
looking into this as its not so critical and is quite hard to determine.)
Physically remove the 320. Boot to the BIOS CMOS menus and see if your
menus permit you to designate the new SATA drive as drive 0 (if it hasn't
happened automatically).
Save the BIOS CMOS config as usual then reboot all the way into XP. XP
may fail to boot because XP will be able to sense the hardware config and
it may (or may not) be able to accomodate the new address of the new 500
SATA drive.
Mark Warner explained how to handle this. It's a bit of a chore but you
should finally get to a stage where you can boot into XP.
XP will now reallocate drive letter entries in the registry during this
first boot. It is XP which designates the drive letter of your second
partition so this process is partly dependent on how much renaming of
partition identifying letters has gone on. There are too many variables
to control (for example the HDD number sequence may or may not make way
for other ATA devices such as optical drives). Also drive letters in any
parameter (INI) files can't be reliably detected and changed. So don't
try and plan this in too much detail (and get overloaded) as the
variables involved are greater than you can control.
The biggest difficulty is your programs being installed to another drive.
If things turn out muddled (programs can't find their way to a clean
launch) then if it takes too long to remedy that you might start again
with a format and reinstal from scratch. In fact, as I write these steps
I'm getting more inclined to reformat even though reinstaling programs
can be a headache.
Don't be tempted to get too fancy and separate your boot and system
partitions - keep them as one (C). Instal all programs to the system (C)
partition. Store only data on the other partition.
Don't get tempted to move the XP swap file to the second drive (320) as
that will cause an extra complication if you have to do this operation
again and the benefits are not very dramatic.
If the 320 is failing then it is not even much good as a backup drive
because when you need a backup you really want to be certain it is not
corrupted.
. I don't know!
. There are