Partitions

[I3rianL]

I have two hard drives, one 30gb and one 80gb. the 30gb one is set as my C: drive and has my windows operating system installed on it. the 80gb one only has some extra files and a lot of free space. what i want to do is to copy what i have on my 30gb drive to my 80gb drive, and set the 80gb drive as my C: drive, so i can take out the 30gb drive to use on another computer. the only problem is that i dont know what will happen to my programs that were originally on the 30gb drive and those on my 80gb drive.

will i have to reinstall my programs? will there be any effects on the operating system?

im using partitionmagic 8.0 to partition my drives.

 

[LED]

1)Partition the 80 Gig drive in 2 with the files on it to the back half (2nd parttion).
2)Ghost or Copy the 30 Gig to the 1st half of the drive.
3) Remove the 30 gig HD and Boot up the 80 Gig to make sure all is well
4)Move the 30 gig to the other Puter if your happy with the results

 

[Zepper]

A program like Partition Commander from VCom (http://www.v-com.com - I bought mine in new/sealed condition very cheaply on eBay) has a wizard that makes such things ridiculously easy. Sometimes even the software available from the drive mfr's makes the job easy. Check the site of the maker of your 80GB drive to see what they have free for the downloading.

.bh.

 

[Snooper]

This isn't really a partioning question so much as a "How do I move the data from an old small drive to my new large drive" question. Ghost it. You use Norton Ghost to EASILY format and copy the entire 30G drive over to the new 80G drive. After it is done, you just need to swap the 30G drive for the 80G drive and reboot. It will be just like it was before, but you will have 50G more space. Then you can do what you want with the old drive.

One note: because you do have some "extra files" on the 80G drive, you need to get everything over onto the 30G drive before you Ghost it, or everything on the 80G drive will be lost. I bet you can easily clean up the 30G drive to make room, even if it is temporary. If you are super cramped for space, you could alwasy uninstall some games and programs to free up room, then reinstall them once you are on the 80G drive.

 

[Zepper]

Programs like Partition Commander can also move your data to the new partition and adjust the data accordingly to fit the new partition size. Even the ones you can get for free from the drive mfr's can do that too.

.bh.

will i have to reinstall my programs? will there be any effects on the operating system?

1- No, as long as the files end up on the same drive letter they started out from. So you'll make at least two partitions on the 80G drive. 1 will be the primary and will have the same files on it as your small drive now and will be your new drive C:. 2 will be an extended partition with as many logical drives inside it as you want. The first logical drive will be drive letter D: and will hold the files currently on you 80G drive. With that organization, there will be no changes noted as far as the OS is concerned except for the location of your C: and D: drive letters both being on the same physical drive.

.bh.

 

[pkme2]

My rig can handle up to 4 HDDs. At the moment, there are 3 with a 4th coming later.
I've used Norton Ghost to clone my second HDD and use the third for storage. I'll go with another HDD when more storage is needed,

I've used the media bay drive on my laptop to clone my original, so doing the same on my video rig seemed the next step. It also allows for cloning on a regular basis. All of this came about because I was tired of wiping other people's HDDs and restoring their stuff.
This seemed the the better alternative to using the Microsoft Restore (it never worked for me). Since HDDs are so cheap nowadays, it was easy to go with clones. All my storage go to other interior or exterior drives.

I'm suggesting this to save all the horror stories I've seen on these typical write-ins. "You can lead a horse to water, but can't make ......." quoted by another forum member. I'll make this suggestion to save anyone from the big bucks and crying, whining etc........
This suggestion comes as a alternative to consider. Pass it on.

 

[I3rianL]

I've separated my 80gb drive into two 40gb partitions, E: and F:, the F: drive is the partition that im going to copy my C: drive to. However the F: drive is set to logical and the E: drive is set to primary. How can i change the F: drive to primary and the E: drive to logical? Will this have an effect on my operating sysetm if i don't change them?

 

[One43637]

recently i replaced an old 60 gig HD with a 74 gig Raptor. i used CasperXP for that and it was as easy as selecting clone from the menu.

http://www.fssdev.com/products/casperxp/

 

[Zepper]

The Operating System has to be in the primary partition. That's why I suggested something like Partition Commander as you can just tell the wizard what you want to do and set back and watch...

.bh.