Does anyone else think getting a new hdd is ridiculous?

[Haunter9X]

Alright, about two or three weeks ago I was up in phoenix and stopped by the fry's on my way back down to tucson. I was running out of room on my 30gb drive so I bought the WD 80gb se (7200rpm/8mb). The eventual goal of this upgrade was to move slow arse windows xp onto the newer/faster drive and then reuse my old drive to install Linux on.........

To make a long and annoying story short, I just finally accomplished this on sunday. Why does it have to be such a pain to move win xp from one hdd to another? I must've tried the western digital program that came with the drive at least 3 times (each time taking 5 or so hours)... No matter what I did or how I configured the drives the new drive would not boot fully, it would get into windows and then just halt w/o a login or anything. Finally I got partition magic 8 and was able to do it just like that...:disgust:

WHY is it necessary to buy an extra program just to do something simple like this??? To me this just reeks of absurdity, that a piece of hardware doesn't come with all the necessary software to install it properly. I guess if I had just been wanting to use the new disk as a secondary disk for xp I would've been fine but that would've been stupid. The most annoying thing about this whole process was that I have a sneaking suspicion that there was some really easy way to do this that I overlooked. Anyone else have any thoughts about this?

 

[Research]

Yes, your suspicion is correct Its amazingly easy to format, partition and install a new hard drive with XP CD itself. The WD disk (as well as Maxtor software) which come with the hard-drives do more bad than good.

 

[Gage8]

Yes, XP makes it easy...step by step

 

[CraigRT]

You should have used Norton Ghost.. makes an exact duplicate clone of your old drive... take out old drive, put in new, boot like nothing has ever changed. I've done that about 5 times with complete success every time.

 

[sak]

Yes i 2nd the Norton Ghost or any disk image program to first image the drive and make backup on ur cd-r and then just image back to the newer drive. much easier and simpler than what every u were tying to do.

 

[techfuzz]

I third Norton Ghost. You can even burn the disk image to CD's if you so desire for a physical backup that you can store elsewhere.

techfuzz

 

[Pilsnerpete]

I tried that retarded, hyped-up data lifeguard tool on the same drive. I thought the problem was windows ME. Don't laugh--it wasn't for me!
I wonder if it would work better between 2 WD drives...I use DI, so I'll never try it again.

 

[SickBeast]

if it were me i would sell the 30gb drive, and partition the 80gb drive as others here have said.

 

[Budman]

Yes I fourth Norton Ghost,there's nothing easier or simpler than using ghost for what you wanted to do.

 

[amcdonald]

I've used both the maxtor & the wd utilities successfully a few times, moving entire server HD's around.
I've used the utilities to copy to other manufacturer's drives and proprietary drives. I never ran into any problems that were software related.
I was going to buy an imaging program like Ghost, but the free downloadable utils did the job.
Its worth tinkering to save $60 IMHO.

 

[0roo0roo]

i used ghost too. u gotta learn to keep your os partitions below 5gb. for ease in making and restoring ghost images, and for copying. its a safety/convenience thing.

 

[billyjak]

I use this awesome program called copy commander, works with all OS and is only $29.95 at office max Look Here

 

[AgaBoogaBoo]

Yup, I use Norton Ghost as well. It works like a charm, I love it.

 

[ElFenix]

Originally posted by: Research
Yes, your suspicion is correct Its amazingly easy to format, partition and install a new hard drive with XP CD itself. The WD disk (as well as Maxtor software) which come with the hard-drives do more bad than good.

wth are you talking about? the maxtor software rules!

 

[azkiwi]

Originally posted by: Budman
Yes I fourth Norton Ghost,there's nothing easier or simpler than using ghost for what you wanted to do.

Does Ghost now work with NTFS drives?

 

[zephyrprime]

I've used Partition magix, ghost, the WD and the Maxtor software before. I haven't found any problems with any of them.

 

[Budman]

Originally posted by: azkiwi

Originally posted by: Budman
Yes I fourth Norton Ghost,there's nothing easier or simpler than using ghost for what you wanted to do.

Does Ghost now work with NTFS drives?

Yes norton ghost 2003 works fine with ntfs.

 

[gtd2000]

Originally posted by: ElFenix
[Qwth are you talking about? the maxtor software rules!

I agree - it is so easy to use - no problems at all

 

[Blooz1]

I installed a WD1000JB a couple of months ago, and tried using their "Data Lifeguard" software to partition and format the drive. It wouldnt let me set up any partitions! It insisted on formatting the whole drive as one giant partition!

I went back and did the formatting with Fdisk/Format.

I'll also put in my $.02 for Ghost...it's a lifesaver!

 

[Research]

Originally posted by: ElFenix

Originally posted by: Research
Yes, your suspicion is correct Its amazingly easy to format, partition and install a new hard drive with XP CD itself. The WD disk (as well as Maxtor software) which come with the hard-drives do more bad than good.

wth are you talking about? the maxtor software rules!

WHy do you need a 'ruling software' when your operating system does the job so nicely? Besides this, the problem I had with Maxtor was that some "NTDLR" .. whatever file was missing. On Maxtor's website, there is a whole set of instructions given on how this was possible, and the cumbersome method to solve such a situation. Why sould one end up in situations like this when you don't even need to waste your time with all this bull? Eventually I cleaned my disk with killdisk to remove all traces of Maxor software, and formatted it using XP.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Maxblast II plus has worked for me repeatedly when used and the only downer has been it's slow compared to PM.