Hard Disk Question

reliqua

Junior Member
Jun 4, 2004
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Hello, I recently purchased a hard disk from new egg, the 120 gig western digital caviar. I currently have a 30 gig western digital caviar of about 4 years old... The thing is that I have my OS installed in this 30 gig hd and I wish to transfer that same OS to my 120 gig hd... I still don't have my 120 gig hd installed, with no partitions... so what woould you guys recommend? A partition of what size for the OS? I have WinXP Professional.. But I dunno what to do... I'm lost :/

I've heard that I can "ghost" my drive with norton ghost, but I have absolutely no idea how to do that...

Thanks for your time,
John.
 

Rix13

Member
May 30, 2004
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download this Western Digital Data LifeGuard Tools from this link HERE it will make a bootable floppy disk, pop in your new 120Gb drive as slave and boot off this floppy and it will allow you to make your partions and copy your existing partition to the new drive. Then turn off your pc and put your new drive as the master and you are all set.
 

reliqua

Junior Member
Jun 4, 2004
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I have a small problem though... The OS installed in my 30 gig hd is installed in a partition 15 gigs big... it also has other useless junk, and I only with to transfer my OS, not the other junk i have in that disk...

Greetings
 

Rix13

Member
May 30, 2004
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the data life guard disk doesnt care if your original partition is a different size then your new one. As for only wanting to copy your OS and not the junk.. what about copying everything then just deleting what you dont need after?
 

reliqua

Junior Member
Jun 4, 2004
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The problem with that is that I want to save as much space when making an individual partition for the OS since I will want to format every now and then my OS...
 

Ages120

Senior member
May 28, 2004
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I would say a safe bet would be 10 gigs. Install about 2 gigs, page file 2 gigs, future updates 1 gig, and 5 left over for system restore points and for temp file creation. If you wanna skimp it 5-3 would probably cut it though
 

reliqua

Junior Member
Jun 4, 2004
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Thanks ages i'll have that in mind (perhaps i could pull the 5 gig limit you set with the temp file creation space to 10 gigs..)... but i have another question... is it possible to use Norton Ghost to Ghost ONLY my OS (not the other stuff that's in the disk with the OS installed) to my new 120 gig hd?
 

Ages120

Senior member
May 28, 2004
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Never used Norton Ghost. Only set up multiple partitions once, and that was using dos.
 

reliqua

Junior Member
Jun 4, 2004
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Oh ok... another quick question :D... By creating partitions, if i download some file installed in a different partition than the OS partition, will it always have to go through that temp file thingie? (ie: unzipping zip files to another partition)
 

reliqua

Junior Member
Jun 4, 2004
14
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Help!!

I recently got a 120 gig WD Caviar HD and i'm trying to install it... Right now my OS is installed in a 30 gig hd... When I installed the 120 gig hd as a slave drive, and then I turned on the pc, i heard a non-stopping CLICk CLICK CLOCK CLICK CLOCK and so on... coming from the new hd... What's going on?

Thanks in advance!
 

Bovinicus

Diamond Member
Aug 8, 2001
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I know it's more work, but I would just do a fresh install and transfer over all your important data. A fresh install always leaves the computer in excellent running condition. You will have to reinstall your programs, but I think it's worth it.
 

reliqua

Junior Member
Jun 4, 2004
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bovinicus, plz read the post before yours, i need help with my drive... it gets stuck at the point where it says "detecting IDE drives" and the new installed HD keeps on clicking..."

This is a brand new HD..
 

Harvey

Administrator<br>Elite Member
Oct 9, 1999
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Originally posted by: reliqua
I have a small problem though... The OS installed in my 30 gig hd is installed in a partition 15 gigs big... it also has other useless junk, and I only with to transfer my OS, not the other junk i have in that disk...
You can use Norton Ghost to transfer your entire active partition to another drive, or a partition on another drive. If you intend to partion your new drive, as well, to use your current OS and setup on your new drive, transfer it to the first partition that will become your C: drive.

IMPORTANT:

If your OS is Win 98 or 98 SE, a good way to do this is to use bootable DOS floppy that includes FORMAT.COM and FDISK.EXE. You will need the updated version of FDISK to handle a 120 GB drive. See this article on Microsoft.com. Here's the English download.

If the OS on your old drive is Win XP, you will need Ghost 2002 or newer, and you will have to use it to set up your new drive.

1. Partion and format your new drive as you want it.

2. Make a bootable floppy with DOS 7 from Win 98 SE, and include your copy of GHOSYPE.EXE and a mouse driver. Microsoft's MOUSE.EXE ver 8.2 is a good one. You can also include an AUTOEXEC.BAT file that calls the mouse driver.

3. Power down, and connect both drives. For convenience, make your old drive the primary master. Make sure the drives are set correctly (Master, Slave, etc.) for the way you connect them to your machine.

4. Boot to the floppy, and select Local - Partition - Partition. That will allow you to select the partition you want to use as the source on your old drive and transfer it to the partition you select on the new one. If you do not intend to partion your new drive, it will be recognize the target drive as having only one partition.

Once you have Ghosted to the new drive, you should be able to remove the old drive and install the new one as the bootable drive. Then, you can delete anything else you don't want to leave on the drive. If this includes installed programs or anything else that may be called in your WIN.INI, SYSTEM.INI, or registry, you should uninstall them properly to avoid error messages on bootup.

The only other thing about Ghost is, the copy drive will need a serious defragging. If you got your copy of Ghost with Norton SystemWorks Pro, I strongly recommend using Norton's defragger. It's much better than the one included with Windows because it places your swap file in one contiguous section at the head of the disk. This prevents the system from fragmenting files when writing around the typical dynamic swap file Windows creates on its own.
 

Bovinicus

Diamond Member
Aug 8, 2001
3,145
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Originally posted by: reliqua
bovinicus, plz read the post before yours, i need help with my drive... it gets stuck at the point where it says "detecting IDE drives" and the new installed HD keeps on clicking..."

This is a brand new HD..

WDD probably offers some piece of software that will test the functionality of the drive. Test it to see if it is defective and return it. DOA hardware does happen.