Advice on reformatting a hard drive

by **Bossman** » Fri Mar 26, 2004 12:20 pm

Alright it's my turn to ask for advice. I am getting ready to install a second hard drive into my computer this weekend. The plan is to make the new HD the prime and then reformat the old one and make it the secondary. That means I will have to convert info from the old drive to the new before I reformat it.

Having never done this, my plan was to take the old drive out and set it aside, put the new drive in and get it loaded with Windows, etc. Make sure it runs, etc., then put the old drive back in and transfer the files to the new drive. Finally reformat the old drive.

Is this the best way to go and what do I need to worry/watch for?

Thanks in advance!

Edit: Damn this is in the wrong forum :tard:

would an admin mind moving it?

by **AnimalCracka** » Fri Mar 26, 2004 2:51 pm

by **Camel toe joe** » Fri Mar 26, 2004 3:00 pm

your idea should work fin just make sure the old drive is set as the slave and the new is set to master

by **Bullhead** » Fri Mar 26, 2004 3:04 pm

If there's no reason to reinstall windows xp, you actually don't have to. You can simply install the new HD as the master, and set the other one as slave (it's usually marked on the drive, if not the new one will have an install guide with the correct jumper settings). Use the install cd/disk the comes with the new drive to make an image, or exact copy, of the old drive onto the new. When done, unplug the old drive, and boot of the new drive to make sure everything is ok. If all went well, you can reconnect the old drive and format it.

Also, once you get that setup working, it's a good thing to move your swap file onto the second HD (but we'll worry about that once you've gotten that far

)

by **Bossman** » Fri Mar 26, 2004 6:57 pm

Boisclair = :tard:

Thanks Bullhead it's nice to see someone is being helpful (boiscliar = :tard:

). The only reason I was going to reinstall was the computer has slowed a bit over the past 1+ year I had it, so I figured Windows needed a good cleaning. Probably due to all the installing/reinstalling I have been doing. Won't reformatting help with that?

Oh yeah, Boiscliar = :tard:

by **yaDad** » Fri Mar 26, 2004 7:14 pm

why would you not want a nice fresh!! install of XP???

put the new drive in as slave and use Partition Magic and set the new drive up to accept the OS and make partitions(im sure its a large HD) and then install OS and get rid of the old OS on the old drive. with drives as CS it really don matter where they are on the IDE.

Thats how i would do it.

by **Bossman** » Fri Mar 26, 2004 7:22 pm

CS? What does partition Magic do? The old drive is 80G, the new one 200G. I had thought to use the new drive as the master and the old one as the slave, but I guess it doesn't matter.

by **SKID MARK** » Fri Mar 26, 2004 7:24 pm

The other thing too is that some of the hard drive copy tools that come with new drives sometimes do not work with Win XP. I have read in forums where Western Digital's software would not work correctly if copying an image from one disk to another. I know that Norton ghost does work for example and Max Blast works that comes with Maxtor hard drives. Good Luck.

by **MMmmGood** » Fri Mar 26, 2004 7:27 pm

Originally posted by Bossman
CS? What does partition Magic do? The old drive is 80G, the new one 200G. I had thought to use the new drive as the master and the old one as the slave, but I guess it doesn't matter.

Your first idea will work perfectly.

by **Bullhead** » Fri Mar 26, 2004 7:28 pm

Is the new drive faster? If not, you may be better off using the 80gb for your o/s, and the 200 for storage. It's entirely up to you. The faster of the 2 drives, or the one with the largest cache, should be the one with the o/s.

Yes, it's a good thing to reinstall windows, I was just stating that you don't HAVE to. I do it every 3-4 months.

CS = Cable Select. This means that whatever position you plug it in on the IDE cable determines it's master/slave status. master is the end, slave is the middle connection. Sometimes you have to set them master slave in order to make cables reach due to mounting issues, depends on the case really. CS is the easiest way to go, though.

Why use partition magic to set up the new drive, when you already have a drive with a working o/s? Use windows to format/partition the drive (so long as you're running winxp now, not 98).

Oh yeah, Boiscliar = :tard:

by **AnimalCracka** » Fri Mar 26, 2004 7:31 pm

Yeah thats what I said:)

Boisclair = :tard:

by **yaDad** » Fri Mar 26, 2004 8:25 pm

yeah exactly....!?!

by **Bossman** » Sat Mar 27, 2004 3:26 am

Thanks! Where can I go to see the cache size on the current drive? Control panel?

by **cavalierlwt** » Sat Mar 27, 2004 8:03 am

Get a copy of Norton's Ghost or one of the other reputable Drive Imaging programs. Like everyone else pointed out, install the OS on the better/faster of the two drives. Intall XP as a clean install, and install the few programs that you know you will always want (for the foreseeable future) on your compter; in my case, I always install MS Office, Outlook, etc. Get it all set up, email configured etc, registered with M$ if need be, and then make a drive image and store it away. Every few months, I copy new documents, files, etc to my other harddrive and then I re-Ghost my Master hard drive. It takes about 15 minutes to re-Ghost and my system is set back to it's pristine condition, before any viruses, adware, corrupt files etc happened.
I advise you to check this method out, it's done really well by me!

by **MMmmGood** » Sat Mar 27, 2004 9:36 am

Originally posted by Bossman
Thanks! Where can I go to see the cache size on the current drive? Control panel?

Right clicik on My computer, then click manage. Then click device manager. Expand out the Disk Drives tab and post here what it says.

Also post the model# of your new drive, it should be printed right on the drive.

Advice on reformatting a hard drive

Advice on reformatting a hard drive

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