noooooo dont make me formt!!!!!

[SilentDeath]

ive got 3 hdd's, ones 40gb which is my boot drive and its almost fulll. then theres my 120gb drive for storage, almost full aswell, then theres my new shiny 160gb which ive not managed to use yet.

i want to sell the 40gb drive and parition my 160gb into 2 parts, 50gb and 100gb.
then i want to clone my win2k install to my new 50gb partition and not break the install. the problem is that my new 160gb drive is an SATA one.
i didnt install my sata drivers with the windows install, so would windows be able to recognise the drive and boot from it?
what changs do i need to make?

also whats the best app (free and non free) for erasing a hdd properly (overwriting it so it cant be read)? and also copying my 40gb contents to 50gb partition?

[Trickle]

I'ed say use the new HD: manufacturer's own free software to transfer the contents of your old HD: to new without having to reformat.

Gnerally speaking the software for all manufacturers will tell you precisely what to do - probably nothing apart from setting the bios to boot from sata at the correct time, as you are adding a drive onto empty sata slot - so as long as you have already installed latest mobo drivers properly

[TooNice]

EDIT: Err... Wrong thread. Sorry.

[Trickle]

Originally posted by |SilentDeath|
also whats the best app (free and non free) for erasing a hdd properly (overwriting it so it cant be read)? and also copying my 40gb contents to 50gb partition?

No idea... but you could just do a quick format, then leave the machine to coppy 40Gig of non important rubbish onto it, before then leaving it again to do a non quick format.

[Austin]

Partn Magic to handle partning but norton ghost to handle copying your OS. If you use a HD manu's sw it's more likely to just ghost the drive rather than partn it as you want. Windows will see your SATA drive, AFAIK you only need the drivers (floppy disk) when installing a SATA HD outside of actual Windows (ie DOS/CMD type environment). Windows won't give a drive letter until you go into HD man in Admin under CP. Whatever you do you need to ghost the 40GB HD to the small partn you make on the 160GB HD. Copy the non OS HD is easy, you could even do it manually in Windows. Plenty of sw to kill data on your old HD(s) although none comes to mind, ghost can do it IIRC.

[SilentDeath]

hmm seems easy enuf.. ill partition the 160 quick, then see about ghosting it
the thing im worried about is if windows wont boot from it due to not relising its an sata drive when it trys to boot

[Austin]

Would make most sense to partn the 50GB (or what you want) first and then simply try a few methods to ghost over from your current 40GB HD. Maybe HD manu sw will do it. That's the biggest landmine but if you keep your 40GB HD as a backup there's no danger. When trying to boot off the new SATA HD simply unplug all other HDs so it has to boot from the SATA. There should be an entry in the Boot Sequence of your BIOS. Keep trying until it will boot successfully ... then simply partn the rest of the HD and copy your 120GB to it as that step is EASY! If you get too stuck just bite the bullet and do a fresh OS install. As before you'll have your old HDs on hand if things cock up and to drag your data from.

Only when 100% certain everything is working fine and copied should you then secure erase the old HDs.

[Nox]

for free app, you should be able to use the backup prog that came with win2k, but you may need 40gb free space on your 120 gb drive... maybe not though, can't remember this program oo well as its been a year or two

Nox

[SilentDeath]

norton ghost 2k3 is rubbishrubbishrubbishrubbishE

with a max speed of about 10mb a second, i spent about 2 and half hours waiting for it, with it crashing twice. not helping was the crappy fact im suppost to be sleeping now and my nf7-s doesnt support usb keyboards in dos... (rev1.1 bios 1.9, any one know if theres has this option?)

ghost = 5 yr old app with windows interface over the top!
simple task of restoring an image to a new partition cant even be done in windows... yay

also the logs say fa as to why it failed twice (once trying to clone, then second trying to back up). the clone hanged on 98% for 10 mins then i reset comp, same happened for backup when it was checking but at about 47%...

also my new maxtor 160gb sata 8mb makes clicking nioses which neiher my 120gb or 40gb maxtors make... no probs from it yet expet the crashign of ghost, dunno why that happened though... but without having a floppy drive to use the maxtor software how can i tell if its b0rked? chkdisk is useless at checking a whole drive for bad sectors, and scandisk (win98) would take 8 hours, and requires a fat32 partition... so what apps can i use?
im going to try maxblast 3 bootable iso now (50mb download ffs!!!)

[TiG]

Sorry to be a pesisimist but i don't think you'll get it to work Even if you managed to clone the drive.

Just my opinion and I wish you well but sata drivers are kinda fundamental on the install process.

TiG

[SilentDeath]

maxtors own soft, maxblast 3 > ghost in every way! (though i think it only works on maxtors, but maxtors rule )

i ran the bootable cd image, has loads of usefull stuff.. decided to leave it doing it overnight cos it was 4:30am when i got round to doing it, and had to be up at 7:30

i think it was probably quicker than ghost, but not by much.. i very much doubt if either of these programs acctaully use UDMA or even MWDMA.. with peak transfer at around 10mb/s.. that might have been cos my 40gb drive is full and very heavily fragmented though....

i am currently using the 160gb as boot, so think it worked.. windows couldnt find media player classic though, till i pionted out the directory its in, which is odd considering this drive is now C: which is what boot used to be.. so why couldnt it find it?

clicking nioses seem to been gone, i hope i dont have to send this drive back :/

[Agent]

SilentDeath you using a NF7 ?
You need the latest BIOS and to enable BUS mastering in there, you'll then have the full speed of the drives in all DOS based (pre windows anyway) applications

[Lambbuster]

do not use ghost, i had problems with it.

[SilentDeath]

the drive is fecked anyway.. its going back
annoyingly i have already ghosted my boot drive to it, and i cant format cos the drive is so fecked. the shop shouldnt be able to either, so all my passwords should be safe

it made clicking nioses all the time ive had it, lots of random crashing (problems caused for ghost etc..) and its just got worse. it now refuses to format, and makes clicky nioses when i try, also locks up computer after a few mins, with only mirc not locked up i have to reset...