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How to install 2nd HDD with Partition Magic 6.0 partitions under Windows ME?
G'day mates,
I'm looking for a simple recipe to ensure success when trying to install a second HDD on a Dell Dimension 4100 under Windows ME (or even just mention of "gotchas" to avoid would be helpful . Current 20GB drive is partitioned C, D, E, F using PM 6.0 I want to install a 2nd HDD (WD 120GB) either as slave on the same cable, or on the second cable as master or slave (see below). I also have a CDRW drive (as G), and will be looking to install a combo DVD/CDRW *or* a DVD writer "soon". So provision needs to be made for both these optical drives too. For compatibility with another ("managed") system, I need to keep the same HDD partitions, but would see C and D as being on the present master HDD with E and F on the new one, if this is possible. An alternative that would be nearly as convenient would be to have C and F on the present drive with D and E on the new one. In fact, any combination that left C on the present master (no doubt the only possibility anyway!) and E plus another partition on the other drive, would be acceptable (though that may mean some playing around with existing batch files if the CDRW drive designation is changed, and I would prefer not to have to do that -- but it could be done.) There is also the issue of the best allocation of the HDDs and the optical drive(s) to the cables. I've seen this recommended and argued both ways: (1) keep the HDDs separate from the CDs so that HDD activity is not so likely to interfere during CD writing; and (2) put the CDs on separate cables so direct copy will work better. The main uses would be: 1. Existing drive stays as the system/applications drive (C), and may contain a second partition (D or F) that would serve as a data backup area. 2. New drive would be the main working drive (E) but would also contain a partition to hold maybe 2 or 3 "Ghosts" of the system drive (probably at least a vanilla system installation and a second one with the main application software freshly installed too). [Or maybe I don't really need a partition for that as the "Ghosts" are basically just files aren't they?] 3. The CDRW would mostly be used for backups and other copies of data from E, and also for backup copies of program CDs (and that may involve direct CD to CD copies in future when I get the second optical drive). It would usually only need to interact with C during program installations. 4. A temporary consideration is the best (i.e. most convenient) way of getting nearly 8GB of data off the present E partition onto the new drive and into the new "E". I can think of possibilities with PM, but it may come down to CD shuffling in the end. :-( Hints, guidance, recommendations, links most welcome. Thank you for listening. Cheers, Phred. -- LID |
#2
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Phred wrote in message ... I'm looking for a simple recipe to ensure success when trying to install a second HDD on a Dell Dimension 4100 under Windows ME Pay me to do it |-) (or even just mention of "gotchas" to avoid would be helpful . Current 20GB drive is partitioned C, D, E, F using PM 6.0 Urk. Thats mad. I want to install a 2nd HDD (WD 120GB) either as slave on the same cable, or on the second cable as master or slave (see below). I also have a CDRW drive (as G), and will be looking to install a combo DVD/CDRW *or* a DVD writer "soon". So provision needs to be made for both these optical drives too. You sure the effect on the cheap plonk supply is warranted ? |-( For compatibility with another ("managed") system, I need to keep the same HDD partitions, Why ? Thats a madly complicated config. but would see C and D as being on the present master HDD with E and F on the new one, if this is possible. Thats pretty mad too. You'd normally want to have the boot drive on the new drive, just because it would normally be much faster than the original old dinosaur 20GB drive. An alternative that would be nearly as convenient would be to have C and F on the present drive with D and E on the new one. I'd bin that complicated scheme myself. In fact, any combination that left C on the present master (no doubt the only possibility anyway!) Nope, you can have it on the 120GB drive and should. and E plus another partition on the other drive, would be acceptable (though that may mean some playing around with existing batch files if the CDRW drive designation is changed, and I would prefer not to have to do that -- but it could be done.) You really should cut to the chase and have a much simpler partitioning scheme, and the boot drive on the new 120GB drive. There is also the issue of the best allocation of the HDDs and the optical drive(s) to the cables. I've seen this recommended and argued both ways: (1) keep the HDDs separate from the CDs so that HDD activity is not so likely to interfere during CD writing; and (2) put the CDs on separate cables so direct copy will work better. The short story is that you are unlikely to be able to pick the difference between those two configs with a proper double blind trial and so its normally best to do whats mechanically more convenient, and thats usually with both hard drives on the same ribbon cable, and both optical drives on the same ribbon cable. Just because both hard drives are normally in the 3.5" bay stack and both optical drives are normally in the 5" bay stack and most ribbon cables dont have enough space between the drive connectors to mix drives in different bay stacks. The main uses would be: 1. Existing drive stays as the system/applications drive (C), Not a good idea, see above. and may contain a second partition (D or F) that would serve as a data backup area. Its generally best to have the data backup on a different physical drive to the drive that its backing up, obviously so you dont lose everything on a single drive failure. And the stuff thats absolutely irreplaceable should be on multiple CDs as well. 2. New drive would be the main working drive (E) Its normally best as the boot drive too, because it will be much faster. but would also contain a partition to hold maybe 2 or 3 "Ghosts" of the system drive (probably at least a vanilla system installation No reason why that cant be on the physical drive since its mostly protecting you against a service pack install ****ing the boot drive up or an app install etc doing the same. and a second one with the main application software freshly installed too). [Or maybe I don't really need a partition for that as the "Ghosts" are basically just files aren't they?] Correct. Image files are, anyway. You can also clone partitions and drives but there isnt normally any real point in doing that for backup. 3. The CDRW would mostly be used for backups and other copies of data from E, and also for backup copies of program CDs (and that may involve direct CD to CD copies in future when I get the second optical drive). I dont normally do it that way even when I do have the drives that allow that. Its generally best to have the copy program just copy it to the hard drive auto and use the same drive for both the original and the copy. Modern burners are so much faster that that approach has little effect on the total copy time now. And you dont actually do that that much so there isnt any point in getting all anal about the time it takes anyway. It would usually only need to interact with C during program installations. And you cant normally even measure any difference in the total install time with the two drives on different ribbon cables for variour reasons. 4. A temporary consideration is the best (i.e. most convenient) way of getting nearly 8GB of data off the present E partition onto the new drive and into the new "E". Most convenient to use ghost or drive image. You appear to want to use that for boot partition backup anyway so you might as well use it for the reconfig at new hard drive install time too. I can think of possibilities with PM, but it may come down to CD shuffling in the end. :-( Nope, it never does. Just get ghost and use it for the reconfig. Hints, guidance, recommendations, links most welcome. |
#3
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Wow talk about overengineering
"Phred" wrote in message ... G'day mates, I'm looking for a simple recipe to ensure success when trying to install a second HDD on a Dell Dimension 4100 under Windows ME (or even just mention of "gotchas" to avoid would be helpful . Current 20GB drive is partitioned C, D, E, F using PM 6.0 I want to install a 2nd HDD (WD 120GB) either as slave on the same cable, or on the second cable as master or slave (see below). I also have a CDRW drive (as G), and will be looking to install a combo DVD/CDRW *or* a DVD writer "soon". So provision needs to be made for both these optical drives too. For compatibility with another ("managed") system, I need to keep the same HDD partitions, but would see C and D as being on the present master HDD with E and F on the new one, if this is possible. An alternative that would be nearly as convenient would be to have C and F on the present drive with D and E on the new one. In fact, any combination that left C on the present master (no doubt the only possibility anyway!) and E plus another partition on the other drive, would be acceptable (though that may mean some playing around with existing batch files if the CDRW drive designation is changed, and I would prefer not to have to do that -- but it could be done.) There is also the issue of the best allocation of the HDDs and the optical drive(s) to the cables. I've seen this recommended and argued both ways: (1) keep the HDDs separate from the CDs so that HDD activity is not so likely to interfere during CD writing; and (2) put the CDs on separate cables so direct copy will work better. The main uses would be: 1. Existing drive stays as the system/applications drive (C), and may contain a second partition (D or F) that would serve as a data backup area. 2. New drive would be the main working drive (E) but would also contain a partition to hold maybe 2 or 3 "Ghosts" of the system drive (probably at least a vanilla system installation and a second one with the main application software freshly installed too). [Or maybe I don't really need a partition for that as the "Ghosts" are basically just files aren't they?] 3. The CDRW would mostly be used for backups and other copies of data from E, and also for backup copies of program CDs (and that may involve direct CD to CD copies in future when I get the second optical drive). It would usually only need to interact with C during program installations. 4. A temporary consideration is the best (i.e. most convenient) way of getting nearly 8GB of data off the present E partition onto the new drive and into the new "E". I can think of possibilities with PM, but it may come down to CD shuffling in the end. :-( Hints, guidance, recommendations, links most welcome. Thank you for listening. Cheers, Phred. -- LID |
#4
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In article ,
"Rod Speed" wrote: Phred wrote in message ... I'm looking for a simple recipe to ensure success when trying to install a second HDD on a Dell Dimension 4100 under Windows ME Pay me to do it |-) While that would be very convenient and enlightening, I don't think it's very practical with you allegedly being down in the deep south in that seedy drug city -- and that's not to mention the hole it would make in my cheap plonk budget. %-) (or even just mention of "gotchas" to avoid would be helpful . Current 20GB drive is partitioned C, D, E, F using PM 6.0 Urk. Thats mad. Yeah. Well, I'm inclined to agree and in fact I'd be more than happy to ping off that "F". But C is not negotiable; D is the CDROM drive on that "managed" machine I mentioned so is unchangeable; so I need a "drive" E to align with the other's data drive and (because I'm running Windows ME) I assume I can only get that by having a D of my own somewhere on a HDD (the slave?). I want to install a 2nd HDD (WD 120GB) either as slave on the same cable, or on the second cable as master or slave (see below). I also have a CDRW drive (as G), and will be looking to install a combo DVD/CDRW *or* a DVD writer "soon". So provision needs to be made for both these optical drives too. You sure the effect on the cheap plonk supply is warranted ? |-( For compatibility with another ("managed") system, I need to keep the same HDD partitions, Why ? Thats a madly complicated config. See above. but would see C and D as being on the present master HDD with E and F on the new one, if this is possible. Thats pretty mad too. You'd normally want to have the boot drive on the new drive, just because it would normally be much faster than the original old dinosaur 20GB drive. But that would mean partitioning the new drive as say 20GB for system and applications and the rest for data and working space. [One problem I thought may exist with that approach may not exist if I've understood one of your comments further down (q.v.).] An alternative that would be nearly as convenient would be to have C and F on the present drive with D and E on the new one. I'd bin that complicated scheme myself. I'm happy to bin F, but I need E. So, can I have C and E on the new [let's assume master] drive with D on the old one as slave? In fact, any combination that left C on the present master (no doubt the only possibility anyway!) Nope, you can have it on the 120GB drive and should. Okay, okay... ;-) and E plus another partition on the other drive, would be acceptable (though that may mean some playing around with existing batch files if the CDRW drive designation is changed, and I would prefer not to have to do that -- but it could be done.) You really should cut to the chase and have a much simpler partitioning scheme, and the boot drive on the new 120GB drive. There is also the issue of the best allocation of the HDDs and the optical drive(s) to the cables. I've seen this recommended and argued both ways: (1) keep the HDDs separate from the CDs so that HDD activity is not so likely to interfere during CD writing; and (2) put the CDs on separate cables so direct copy will work better. The short story is that you are unlikely to be able to pick the difference between those two configs with a proper double blind trial and so its normally best to do whats mechanically more convenient, and thats usually with both hard drives on the same ribbon cable, and both optical drives on the same ribbon cable. Just because both hard drives are normally in the 3.5" bay stack and both optical drives are normally in the 5" bay stack and most ribbon cables dont have enough space between the drive connectors to mix drives in different bay stacks. Sounds reasonable. I was just a bit concerned about whether the CD drives would do CD to CD copy reliably if both on the same cable (bearing in mind the 4100 is only a P3 1.1GHz machine). But I certainly don't want to get into the ribbon stretching game! The main uses would be: 1. Existing drive stays as the system/applications drive (C), Not a good idea, see above. and may contain a second partition (D or F) that would serve as a data backup area. Its generally best to have the data backup on a different physical drive to the drive that its backing up, obviously so you dont lose everything on a single drive failure. That was the idea! The data on E on the new drive and the backup on D on the old one. And the stuff thats absolutely irreplaceable should be on multiple CDs as well. Pretty well *all* my junk is on 4 (if not 6 CDs -- *finding* the "irreplaceable" will be the problem if the time comes. 8-) 2. New drive would be the main working drive (E) Its normally best as the boot drive too, because it will be much faster. but would also contain a partition to hold maybe 2 or 3 "Ghosts" of the system drive (probably at least a vanilla system installation No reason why that cant be on the physical drive since its mostly protecting you against a service pack install ****ing the boot drive up or an app install etc doing the same. Okay, here's where I may have been too pessimistic. I thought the clones of C would have to be on a different physical drive. Are you saying the "Ghosts" can simply be "files" on a separate partition of the same physical drive as C? If so, that certainly would make a difference to my approach, and remove that objection to having the new drive as the master. But one other thought occurs: Doing it this way is going to mean a *lot* of thrashing of the drive whenever creating or using one of these images, given that it would mean the transfer of maybe 20GB of stuff from one place to another on the same physical drive each time. and a second one with the main application software freshly installed too). [Or maybe I don't really need a partition for that as the "Ghosts" are basically just files aren't they?] Correct. Image files are, anyway. You can also clone partitions and drives but there isnt normally any real point in doing that for backup. I was thinking of two or three clones of C he 1. Just the system and very basic stuff like drivers etc. installed. 2. The above plus the "standard" applications (MS Office, graphics, and basic utilities for mail, web, FTP etc.). And maybe, 3. The above plus other stable installations as they are required. (This one would be "temporary" in that it could be overwritten by new versions when other stuff is added. I'm thinking I should probably start with this one for my present working system so I can recover somewhat if I have problems with that fresh install approach.) 3. The CDRW would mostly be used for backups and other copies of data from E, and also for backup copies of program CDs (and that may involve direct CD to CD copies in future when I get the second optical drive). I dont normally do it that way even when I do have the drives that allow that. Its generally best to have the copy program just copy it to the hard drive auto and use the same drive for both the original and the copy. Modern burners are so much faster that that approach has little effect on the total copy time True. But you do have to swap CDs that way, and it's been my habit to do this sort of copying while doing other (non-computer) things. So the thought of just loading the drives and coming back later to a job done instead of half done, is pretty appealing. now. And you dont actually do that that much so there isnt any point in getting all anal about the time it takes anyway. It would usually only need to interact with C during program installations. And you cant normally even measure any difference in the total install time with the two drives on different ribbon cables for variour reasons. 4. A temporary consideration is the best (i.e. most convenient) way of getting nearly 8GB of data off the present E partition onto the new drive and into the new "E". Most convenient to use ghost or drive image. You appear to want to use that for boot partition backup anyway so you might as well use it for the reconfig at new hard drive install time too. I'm starting to see a lot of "gotchas" looming here for the neophyte! And if it all goes pear shaped I won't have access to the USENET "help desk" of collective wisdom to sort it out! (That's one reason I was hoping for a pointer to a "recipe book" of instructions for doing this sort of thing. I clearly need to give the actual approach rather more thought. The idea of installing a second HDD seemed pretty simple at the time. 8-) I can think of possibilities with PM, but it may come down to CD shuffling in the end. :-( Nope, it never does. Just get ghost and use it for the reconfig. Hints, guidance, recommendations, links most welcome. Thanks very much for your input, Rod. Cheers, Phred. -- LID |
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#6
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Current 20GB drive is partitioned C, D, E, F using PM 6.0
Urk. Thats mad. Yeah. Well, I'm inclined to agree I don`t know... kids these days - i`ve still use a 20Gb boot drive in 4 partitions (using a newer 80Gb drive as a filestore), and this was a luxury compared to my old 3.2Gb drive. That was a luxury compared to... snip waffle Anyway... back when I ran an Amiga, I had a 20Mb (megabyte) drive split into 4 partitions when my primary 130Mb (?) drive failed. That was plenty to run a full gui / multitasking OS etc. I think it had a faulty cache chip on the drive, so any file transfers larger than about 300k were liable to be trash, and by keeping data in smaller partitions I was able to carry on running a successful bulletin board and still had ~200 files available for download :-p Ahhhh those were the days :-p -- Please add "[newsgroup]" in the subject of any personal replies via email * old email address "btiruseless" abandoned due to worm-generated spam * --- My new email address has "ngspamtrap" & @btinternet.com in it ;-) --- |
#7
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Phred wrote in message ... Rod Speed wrote Phred wrote I'm looking for a simple recipe to ensure success when trying to install a second HDD on a Dell Dimension 4100 under Windows ME Pay me to do it |-) While that would be very convenient and enlightening, I don't think it's very practical with you allegedly being down in the deep south in that seedy drug city Where we've recently had one of the drug kings executed, literally. -- and that's not to mention the hole it would make in my cheap plonk budget. %-) True, that would have those real downsides. (or even just mention of "gotchas" to avoid would be helpful . Current 20GB drive is partitioned C, D, E, F using PM 6.0 Urk. Thats mad. Yeah. Well, I'm inclined to agree and in fact I'd be more than happy to ping off that "F". But C is not negotiable; D is the CDROM drive on that "managed" machine I mentioned so is unchangeable; You appeared to be saying that the 20GB drive had been paritioned into 4 partititions. Which version is due to too much cheap plonk ? so I need a "drive" E to align with the other's data drive Cant understand this bit. and (because I'm running Windows ME) I assume I can only get that by having a D of my own somewhere on a HDD (the slave?). Or this. I want to install a 2nd HDD (WD 120GB) either as slave on the same cable, or on the second cable as master or slave (see below). I also have a CDRW drive (as G), and will be looking to install a combo DVD/CDRW *or* a DVD writer "soon". So provision needs to be made for both these optical drives too. You sure the effect on the cheap plonk supply is warranted ? |-( For compatibility with another ("managed") system, I need to keep the same HDD partitions, Why ? Thats a madly complicated config. See above. See above. but would see C and D as being on the present master HDD with E and F on the new one, if this is possible. Thats pretty mad too. You'd normally want to have the boot drive on the new drive, just because it would normally be much faster than the original old dinosaur 20GB drive. But that would mean partitioning the new drive as say 20GB for system and applications and the rest for data and working space. Yes, but that is normally the best approach if you say want to ghost the OS and apps boot partition before doing any install or service pack install, so you can restore gracefully from the image if it all goes completely pear shaped. Basically have a reasonable sized OS and app partition thats reasonably quick to image to encourage you to image it just before the install and to not just decide that the risk is small with the install of something and dont bother to image the OS and app partition first. [One problem I thought may exist with that approach may not exist if I've understood one of your comments further down (q.v.).] Not into those greasy greek abbreviations thanks. An alternative that would be nearly as convenient would be to have C and F on the present drive with D and E on the new one. I'd bin that complicated scheme myself. I'm happy to bin F, but I need E. Spell out why. So, can I have C and E on the new [let's assume master] drive with D on the old one as slave? Yes. With the Win9x/ME family you control that with the type of partition you create. Primary dos partitions get a letter first, then logical drives within extended dos partitions get lettered after that, and with both sets, the physical boot drive gets lettered before the other drive. So you can get that result by having a primary dos partition on the old drive. You have to have one on the new drive to boot from, so that will see the C and D letters allocated the way you want and the rest of the new drive will have to be a logical drive in an extended dos partition and so it will get the E letter, because its not a primary dos partition. In fact, any combination that left C on the present master (no doubt the only possibility anyway!) Nope, you can have it on the 120GB drive and should. Okay, okay... ;-) and E plus another partition on the other drive, would be acceptable (though that may mean some playing around with existing batch files if the CDRW drive designation is changed, and I would prefer not to have to do that -- but it could be done.) You really should cut to the chase and have a much simpler partitioning scheme, and the boot drive on the new 120GB drive. There is also the issue of the best allocation of the HDDs and the optical drive(s) to the cables. I've seen this recommended and argued both ways: (1) keep the HDDs separate from the CDs so that HDD activity is not so likely to interfere during CD writing; and (2) put the CDs on separate cables so direct copy will work better. The short story is that you are unlikely to be able to pick the difference between those two configs with a proper double blind trial and so its normally best to do whats mechanically more convenient, and thats usually with both hard drives on the same ribbon cable, and both optical drives on the same ribbon cable. Just because both hard drives are normally in the 3.5" bay stack and both optical drives are normally in the 5" bay stack and most ribbon cables dont have enough space between the drive connectors to mix drives in different bay stacks. Sounds reasonable. I was just a bit concerned about whether the CD drives would do CD to CD copy reliably if both on the same cable Yep, modern burnproof burners are fine with that. (bearing in mind the 4100 is only a P3 1.1GHz machine). I did it fine in a 586/133. But I certainly don't want to get into the ribbon stretching game! Yeah, you can get one made for the other config but its not worth the farting around. The main uses would be: 1. Existing drive stays as the system/applications drive (C), Not a good idea, see above. and may contain a second partition (D or F) that would serve as a data backup area. Its generally best to have the data backup on a different physical drive to the drive that its backing up, obviously so you dont lose everything on a single drive failure. That was the idea! The data on E on the new drive and the backup on D on the old one. Yes, except for the image of the boot OS and app partition, done to allow a convenient step back to the situation before an install. Thats fine onto another partition on the big new drive, because its not protecting against drive failure. If you do want to be able to recover quickly from a hardware failure by just restoring the boot OS and apps partition, its best to put that on CDs or DVDs because you can see both hard drives killed by a power supply failure or just theft of the system etc. Its not actually a fantastically viable approach tho because with the standard Win config, the email files and other stuff like shortcuts and favorites are normally on the boot partition too and so the image file will be well out of date by the time you want to use the image file for hard drive failure or theft. What you can do is put the image of that partition on the CDs or DVDs and in addition use a real backup prog to save whats changed to CDs since the image file was created. Then on say a hard drive failure, you restore the image file, then restore the real incremental backup too and you are back where you were when the last incremental backup was done. And the stuff thats absolutely irreplaceable should be on multiple CDs as well. Pretty well *all* my junk is on 4 (if not 6 CDs -- *finding* the "irreplaceable" will be the problem if the time comes. 8-) Yeah, worth giving one set to a mate etc for safe keeping, just in case the place burns down etc. In your case you could leave them down the pub if you have no mates. These are best done separately to the image of the boot partition. 2. New drive would be the main working drive (E) Its normally best as the boot drive too, because it will be much faster. but would also contain a partition to hold maybe 2 or 3 "Ghosts" of the system drive (probably at least a vanilla system installation No reason why that cant be on the physical drive since its mostly protecting you against a service pack install ****ing the boot drive up or an app install etc doing the same. Okay, here's where I may have been too pessimistic. I thought the clones of C would have to be on a different physical drive. Clones do, image files dont. Image files are generally best. You can keep more than one, with compression being possible with image files but not with clones, with only a slightly slower restore time if you need to do a restore. Are you saying the "Ghosts" can simply be "files" on a separate partition of the same physical drive as C? Yes, ghost image files can be. You can use image files, or true partition clones. Normally image files are best. If so, that certainly would make a difference to my approach, and remove that objection to having the new drive as the master. Yeah, its generally the best approach with a single drive too. Two partitions, one for the boot OS and apps partition so you can image that before installs to make it easy to go back if the install goes pear shaped, the other partition for all the data files and the image files. I just included this for the other pervers at this traffic that may only have one drive. But one other thought occurs: Dangerous business, can end in tears before bedtime. Doing it this way is going to mean a *lot* of thrashing of the drive whenever creating or using one of these images, given that it would mean the transfer of maybe 20GB of stuff from one place to another on the same physical drive each time. In practice that doesnt happen because the imaging programs buffer the image file in ram until a big chunk has been done and then dumps it into the image file in the second partition. You do notice a difference if you are cloning a partition instead of making an image file of it, but cloning isnt normally the best approach for various reasons. and a second one with the main application software freshly installed too). [Or maybe I don't really need a partition for that as the "Ghosts" are basically just files aren't they?] Correct. Image files are, anyway. You can also clone partitions and drives but there isnt normally any real point in doing that for backup. I was thinking of two or three clones of C he These are actually images, not clones. 1. Just the system and very basic stuff like drivers etc. installed. Yes, I normally do create a few images during an OS install. Mainly to minimise the effort if I stuff something up later in the apps install particularly, I can just restore an image instead of completely restarting the OS and apps install. I normally make the first image of just the OS itself, before any drivers are added, just because the addition of drivers can produce a mess with some hardware. Then when all the hardware drivers have been installed, image that before installing any of the apps. Just so that if that goes pear shaped, its easy to get back to the bare OS and drivers config. 2. The above plus the "standard" applications (MS Office, graphics, and basic utilities for mail, web, FTP etc.). Yep. And maybe, 3. The above plus other stable installations as they are required. (This one would be "temporary" in that it could be overwritten by new versions when other stuff is added. Yeah, I normally create an image before installing anything, and keep previous images too, basically because that simplifys things if the problem with the latest install doesnt become visible for a few days etc and it wont uninstall cleanly. I basically only delete images when I need more space for the latest one. No point in deleting any image until you need the space it occupys. I'm thinking I should probably start with this one for my present working system so I can recover somewhat if I have problems with that fresh install approach.) That approach has its downsides, restoring that image before doing an additional install. Basically Win keeps quite a bit of stuff in the boot partition, email, favorites, shortcuts, all sorts of minor config stuff like what display format is used in particular folders etc. So you dont normally want to restore before a new install. 3. The CDRW would mostly be used for backups and other copies of data from E, and also for backup copies of program CDs (and that may involve direct CD to CD copies in future when I get the second optical drive). I dont normally do it that way even when I do have the drives that allow that. Its generally best to have the copy program just copy it to the hard drive auto and use the same drive for both the original and the copy. Modern burners are so much faster that that approach has little effect on the total copy time now. True. But you do have to swap CDs that way, and it's been my habit to do this sort of copying while doing other (non-computer) things. You'll find that with modern burners on lower horsepower PCs like that that the system isnt that usable while the copy is being done, very sluggish, and that the burn is over so quickly that I dont usually try to do much while it happens. Tho admittedly I copy CDs on the test machine now. So the thought of just loading the drives and coming back later to a job done instead of half done, is pretty appealing. Yes, but the system will be surprisingly sluggish with modern fast burners and a lower horsepower PC like that. I find it a bit irritating to even play freecell while the copy happens, let alone say browse newsgroups. Thats the main reason I copy CDs on the test machine. And you dont actually do that that much so there isnt any point in getting all anal about the time it takes anyway. It would usually only need to interact with C during program installations. And you cant normally even measure any difference in the total install time with the two drives on different ribbon cables for variour reasons. 4. A temporary consideration is the best (i.e. most convenient) way of getting nearly 8GB of data off the present E partition onto the new drive and into the new "E". Most convenient to use ghost or drive image. You appear to want to use that for boot partition backup anyway so you might as well use it for the reconfig at new hard drive install time too. I'm starting to see a lot of "gotchas" looming here for the neophyte! Yeah, well worth thinking thru the config before implementing it. You're gunna be using it for quite a while in the new config. And if it all goes pear shaped I won't have access to the USENET "help desk" of collective wisdom to sort it out! Yeah, I'd never go back to just one PC again voluntarily. So convenient to be able to drop an error message into google and resolve it in minutes. (That's one reason I was hoping for a pointer to a "recipe book" of instructions for doing this sort of thing. Trouble is that there isnt much agreement on the best config so thats not that feasible. You dont even get much of that with the basic question of the best partitioning for a single and dual drive configs. I clearly need to give the actual approach rather more thought. The idea of installing a second HDD seemed pretty simple at the time. 8-) Yeah, computing has always been like that |-) I can think of possibilities with PM, but it may come down to CD shuffling in the end. :-( Nope, it never does. Just get ghost and use it for the reconfig. Hints, guidance, recommendations, links most welcome. Thanks very much for your input, Rod. No probs, happy to keep discussing the detail for as long as it takes. |
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In article ,
"Rod Speed" wrote: Phred wrote in message ... Rod Speed wrote Phred wrote I'm looking for a simple recipe to ensure success when trying to install a second HDD on a Dell Dimension 4100 under Windows ME [...] (or even just mention of "gotchas" to avoid would be helpful . Current 20GB drive is partitioned C, D, E, F using PM 6.0 Urk. Thats mad. Yeah. Well, I'm inclined to agree and in fact I'd be more than happy to ping off that "F". But C is not negotiable; D is the CDROM drive on that "managed" machine I mentioned so is unchangeable; You appeared to be saying that the 20GB drive had been paritioned into 4 partititions. Yes. Which version is due to too much cheap plonk ? Dunno about "too much". [We had a farmhand years ago from the other side of the planet, but still very practical. He always said you can't have too much to drink because you fall down when you've had enough. ] However, I admit that most things after dinner are probably influenced by cheap plonk to some extent. %-) so I need a "drive" E to align with the other's data drive Cant understand this bit. There are two machines: mine and the corporate "managed" machine. I have no influence over the config of the latter, but it would be very convenient for the sort of stuff I do (and the nifty little batch utils etc. I've written to facilitate this) if I could keep some sort of one to one relationship as I have now. Essentially, this comes down to having a drive "E" for data and working, and from what you've said below there's probably no problem here if I use the new drive with primary C and logical E and the old one as primary D. (The complication will be getting the present C, D, E, and F on the old drive combined/deleted/transferred/whatever to achieve the desired new config with two physical drives, without screwing things up.) and (because I'm running Windows ME) I assume I can only get that by having a D of my own somewhere on a HDD (the slave?). Or this. Just saying that under Windows ME I assumed I would have to have C and D in order to have E (i.e. I can't just have C and E). [This is rather irrelevant anyway, as we're both now agreed that the new drive will have to have two partitions (C for system and apps; E for data and working) and the old drive will also need a designation -- which would be D if all is right in the world.] I want to install a 2nd HDD (WD 120GB) either as slave on the same cable, or on the second cable as master or slave (see below). I also have a CDRW drive (as G), and will be looking to install a combo DVD/CDRW *or* a DVD writer "soon". So provision needs to be made for both these optical drives too. You sure the effect on the cheap plonk supply is warranted ? |-( For compatibility with another ("managed") system, I need to keep the same HDD partitions, Why ? Thats a madly complicated config. See above. See above. but would see C and D as being on the present master HDD with E and F on the new one, if this is possible. Thats pretty mad too. You'd normally want to have the boot drive on the new drive, just because it would normally be much faster than the original old dinosaur 20GB drive. But that would mean partitioning the new drive as say 20GB for system and applications and the rest for data and working space. Yes, but that is normally the best approach if you say want to ghost the OS and apps boot partition before doing any install or service pack install, so you can restore gracefully from the image if it all goes completely pear shaped. Basically have a reasonable sized OS and app partition thats reasonably quick to image to encourage you to image it just before the install and to not just decide that the risk is small with the install of something and dont bother to image the OS and app partition first. Sounds very reasonable, and is pretty much what I had in mind. The main uncertainty is assigning the size of that partition. (What did Bill say? "640KB is enough for anyone"? My present C is roughly 5GB, and it's bloody tight. 20GB may do for awhile I guess. How good is the compression with Ghost or Drive Image for images of sparsely populated partitions? [One problem I thought may exist with that approach may not exist if I've understood one of your comments further down (q.v.).] Not into those greasy greek abbreviations thanks. An alternative that would be nearly as convenient would be to have C and F on the present drive with D and E on the new one. I'd bin that complicated scheme myself. I'm happy to bin F, but I need E. Spell out why. See above -- and it's really becoming irrelevant anyway, if I'm starting to understand all this. So, can I have C and E on the new [let's assume master] drive with D on the old one as slave? Yes. With the Win9x/ME family you control that with the type of partition you create. Primary dos partitions get a letter first, then logical drives within extended dos partitions get lettered after that, and with both sets, the physical boot drive gets lettered before the other drive. So you can get that result by having a primary dos partition on the old drive. You have to have one on the new drive to boot from, so that will see the C and D letters allocated the way you want and the rest of the new drive will have to be a logical drive in an extended dos partition and so it will get the E letter, because its not a primary dos partition. That's good, and basically solves that aspect. In fact, any combination that left C on the present master (no doubt the only possibility anyway!) Nope, you can have it on the 120GB drive and should. Okay, okay... ;-) and E plus another partition on the other drive, would be acceptable (though that may mean some playing around with existing batch files if the CDRW drive designation is changed, and I would prefer not to have to do that -- but it could be done.) You really should cut to the chase and have a much simpler partitioning scheme, and the boot drive on the new 120GB drive. There is also the issue of the best allocation of the HDDs and the optical drive(s) to the cables. I've seen this recommended and argued both ways: (1) keep the HDDs separate from the CDs so that HDD activity is not so likely to interfere during CD writing; and (2) put the CDs on separate cables so direct copy will work better. The short story is that you are unlikely to be able to pick the difference between those two configs with a proper double blind trial and so its normally best to do whats mechanically more convenient, and thats usually with both hard drives on the same ribbon cable, and both optical drives on the same ribbon cable. Just because both hard drives are normally in the 3.5" bay stack and both optical drives are normally in the 5" bay stack and most ribbon cables dont have enough space between the drive connectors to mix drives in different bay stacks. Sounds reasonable. I was just a bit concerned about whether the CD drives would do CD to CD copy reliably if both on the same cable Yep, modern burnproof burners are fine with that. (bearing in mind the 4100 is only a P3 1.1GHz machine). I did it fine in a 586/133. But I certainly don't want to get into the ribbon stretching game! Yeah, you can get one made for the other config but its not worth the farting around. The main uses would be: 1. Existing drive stays as the system/applications drive (C), Not a good idea, see above. and may contain a second partition (D or F) that would serve as a data backup area. Its generally best to have the data backup on a different physical drive to the drive that its backing up, obviously so you dont lose everything on a single drive failure. That was the idea! The data on E on the new drive and the backup on D on the old one. Yes, except for the image of the boot OS and app partition, done to allow a convenient step back to the situation before an install. Thats fine onto another partition on the big new drive, because its not protecting against drive failure. Yeah. I was assuming there wouldn't be room on the old 20GB anyway, which is another reason why my original plan involved keeping that as the primary drive. If the image files are happy on the same physical drive, there's no problem. If you do want to be able to recover quickly from a hardware failure by just restoring the boot OS and apps partition, its best to put that on CDs or DVDs because you can see both hard drives killed by a power supply failure or just theft of the system etc. Good idea. Will do that too. (Eventually. ;-) Its not actually a fantastically viable approach tho because with the standard Win config, the email files and other stuff like shortcuts and favorites are normally on the boot partition too and so the image file will be well out of date by the time you want to use the image file for hard drive failure or theft. I back up mail and favourites regularly anyway. (Favourites routinely [because I want to transfer them between the two machines I mentioned] and Mail when I think of it -- at least once/month.) What you can do is put the image of that partition on the CDs or DVDs and in addition use a real backup prog to save whats changed to CDs since the image file was created. Then on say a hard drive failure, you restore the image file, then restore the real incremental backup too and you are back where you were when the last incremental backup was done. Certainly worth thinking about. I'm using simple old XCOPY for backups at the moment. Maybe a dedicated backup program would be worth it. (I still haven't found out how to backup (or even copy) MSIE offline files with XCOPY, or anything else I've tried!) And the stuff thats absolutely irreplaceable should be on multiple CDs as well. Pretty well *all* my junk is on 4 (if not 6 CDs -- *finding* the "irreplaceable" will be the problem if the time comes. 8-) Yeah, worth giving one set to a mate etc for safe keeping, just in case the place burns down etc. In your case you could leave them down the pub if you have no mates. They're all at the pub anyway. These are best done separately to the image of the boot partition. 2. New drive would be the main working drive (E) Its normally best as the boot drive too, because it will be much faster. but would also contain a partition to hold maybe 2 or 3 "Ghosts" of the system drive (probably at least a vanilla system installation No reason why that cant be on the physical drive since its mostly protecting you against a service pack install ****ing the boot drive up or an app install etc doing the same. Okay, here's where I may have been too pessimistic. I thought the clones of C would have to be on a different physical drive. Clones do, image files dont. Image files are generally best. You can keep more than one, with compression being possible with image files but not with clones, with only a slightly slower restore time if you need to do a restore. Ha! My jargon wasn't quite with it. Yes, I'm basically thinking image files in most of this. My mistake thinking clones~images. Are you saying the "Ghosts" can simply be "files" on a separate partition of the same physical drive as C? Yes, ghost image files can be. You can use image files, or true partition clones. Normally image files are best. If so, that certainly would make a difference to my approach, and remove that objection to having the new drive as the master. Yeah, its generally the best approach with a single drive too. Two partitions, one for the boot OS and apps partition so you can image that before installs to make it easy to go back if the install goes pear shaped, the other partition for all the data files and the image files. I just included this for the other pervers at this traffic that may only have one drive. But one other thought occurs: Dangerous business, can end in tears before bedtime. Doing it this way is going to mean a *lot* of thrashing of the drive whenever creating or using one of these images, given that it would mean the transfer of maybe 20GB of stuff from one place to another on the same physical drive each time. In practice that doesnt happen because the imaging programs buffer the image file in ram until a big chunk has been done and then dumps it into the image file in the second partition. You do notice a difference if you are cloning a partition instead of making an image file of it, but cloning isnt normally the best approach for various reasons. and a second one with the main application software freshly installed too). [Or maybe I don't really need a partition for that as the "Ghosts" are basically just files aren't they?] Correct. Image files are, anyway. You can also clone partitions and drives but there isnt normally any real point in doing that for backup. I was thinking of two or three clones of C he These are actually images, not clones. 1. Just the system and very basic stuff like drivers etc. installed. Yes, I normally do create a few images during an OS install. Mainly to minimise the effort if I stuff something up later in the apps install particularly, I can just restore an image instead of completely restarting the OS and apps install. I normally make the first image of just the OS itself, before any drivers are added, just because the addition of drivers can produce a mess with some hardware. Then when all the hardware drivers have been installed, image that before installing any of the apps. Just so that if that goes pear shaped, its easy to get back to the bare OS and drivers config. 2. The above plus the "standard" applications (MS Office, graphics, and basic utilities for mail, web, FTP etc.). Yep. And maybe, 3. The above plus other stable installations as they are required. (This one would be "temporary" in that it could be overwritten by new versions when other stuff is added. Yeah, I normally create an image before installing anything, and keep previous images too, basically because that simplifys things if the problem with the latest install doesnt become visible for a few days etc and it wont uninstall cleanly. I basically only delete images when I need more space for the latest one. No point in deleting any image until you need the space it occupys. As one of the world's great archivists, I'm completely happy with that approach. ;-) I'm thinking I should probably start with this one for my present working system so I can recover somewhat if I have problems with that fresh install approach.) That approach has its downsides, restoring that image before doing an additional install. Basically Win keeps quite a bit of stuff in the boot partition, email, favorites, shortcuts, all sorts of minor config stuff like what display format is used in particular folders etc. So you dont normally want to restore before a new install. No. I was thinking more about if I stuff up the new install I can at least go back to what I have now and ask you some more questions. It may not be the best config, but I can at least access News. :-) 3. The CDRW would mostly be used for backups and other copies of data from E, and also for backup copies of program CDs (and that may involve direct CD to CD copies in future when I get the second optical drive). I dont normally do it that way even when I do have the drives that allow that. Its generally best to have the copy program just copy it to the hard drive auto and use the same drive for both the original and the copy. Modern burners are so much faster that that approach has little effect on the total copy time now. True. But you do have to swap CDs that way, and it's been my habit to do this sort of copying while doing other (non-computer) things. You'll find that with modern burners on lower horsepower PCs like that that the system isnt that usable while the copy is being done, very sluggish, and that the burn is over so quickly that I dont usually try to do much while it happens. That's what I was getting at. I don't try to do *anything* on the PC while burning CDs (and I still get too many coasters). My "other (non-computer) things" are cooking dinner and having a glass or two (sometimes three, if there's enough left in the bottle %-) of red. Tho admittedly I copy CDs on the test machine now. I'll have to get one of those. I do have an old 486DX4-100, with the last version of Windows 95, buried here somewhere; but I doubt if that's up to the mark. [ Had visions of playing with Linux on it and maybe using it as a firewall/print server etc. But Linux has gone pretty much bloatware now too, so I doubt if it'll even handle that -- assuming it will start at all! ] So the thought of just loading the drives and coming back later to a job done instead of half done, is pretty appealing. Yes, but the system will be surprisingly sluggish with modern fast burners and a lower horsepower PC like that. I find it a bit irritating to even play freecell while the copy happens, let alone say browse newsgroups. Thats the main reason I copy CDs on the test machine. And you dont actually do that that much so there isnt any point in getting all anal about the time it takes anyway. It would usually only need to interact with C during program installations. And you cant normally even measure any difference in the total install time with the two drives on different ribbon cables for variour reasons. 4. A temporary consideration is the best (i.e. most convenient) way of getting nearly 8GB of data off the present E partition onto the new drive and into the new "E". Most convenient to use ghost or drive image. You appear to want to use that for boot partition backup anyway so you might as well use it for the reconfig at new hard drive install time too. I'm starting to see a lot of "gotchas" looming here for the neophyte! Yeah, well worth thinking thru the config before implementing it. You're gunna be using it for quite a while in the new config. And if it all goes pear shaped I won't have access to the USENET "help desk" of collective wisdom to sort it out! Yeah, I'd never go back to just one PC again voluntarily. So convenient to be able to drop an error message into google and resolve it in minutes. (That's one reason I was hoping for a pointer to a "recipe book" of instructions for doing this sort of thing. Trouble is that there isnt much agreement on the best config so thats not that feasible. You dont even get much of that with the basic question of the best partitioning for a single and dual drive configs. I wasn't thinking so much about that now as about how's the easiest way to get from what I've got (C, D, E, and F on one 20GB physical drive) to a new config with C and E on the new 120GB drive, "leaving" D on the old drive as slave. Bearing in mind that my resources are Windows ME and Partition Magic 6. I clearly need to give the actual approach rather more thought. The idea of installing a second HDD seemed pretty simple at the time. 8-) Yeah, computing has always been like that |-) I can think of possibilities with PM, but it may come down to CD shuffling in the end. :-( Nope, it never does. Just get ghost and use it for the reconfig. Hints, guidance, recommendations, links most welcome. Thanks very much for your input, Rod. No probs, happy to keep discussing the detail for as long as it takes. Being Friday night, I won't try to go into more detail just now. ;-) But I'll be back! And thanks again for your help. Cheers, Phred. -- LID |
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"Phred" wrote in message ... In article , "Rod Speed" wrote: Phred wrote in message ... Rod Speed wrote Phred wrote I'm looking for a simple recipe to ensure success when trying to install a second HDD on a Dell Dimension 4100 under Windows ME [...] (or even just mention of "gotchas" to avoid would be helpful . Current 20GB drive is partitioned C, D, E, F using PM 6.0 Urk. Thats mad. Yeah. Well, I'm inclined to agree and in fact I'd be more than happy to ping off that "F". But C is not negotiable; D is the CDROM drive on that "managed" machine I mentioned so is unchangeable; You appeared to be saying that the 20GB drive had been paritioned into 4 partititions. Yes. Which version is due to too much cheap plonk ? Dunno about "too much". [We had a farmhand years ago from the other side of the planet, but still very practical. He always said you can't have too much to drink because you fall down when you've had enough. ] However, I admit that most things after dinner are probably influenced by cheap plonk to some extent. %-) so I need a "drive" E to align with the other's data drive Cant understand this bit. There are two machines: mine and the corporate "managed" machine. I have no influence over the config of the latter, but it would be very convenient for the sort of stuff I do (and the nifty little batch utils etc. I've written to facilitate this) if I could keep some sort of one to one relationship as I have now. Essentially, this comes down to having a drive "E" for data and working, and from what you've said below there's probably no problem here if I use the new drive with primary C and logical E and the old one as primary D. (The complication will be getting the present C, D, E, and F on the old drive combined/deleted/transferred/whatever to achieve the desired new config with two physical drives, without screwing things up.) and (because I'm running Windows ME) I assume I can only get that by having a D of my own somewhere on a HDD (the slave?). Or this. Just saying that under Windows ME I assumed I would have to have C and D in order to have E (i.e. I can't just have C and E). [This is rather irrelevant anyway, as we're both now agreed that the new drive will have to have two partitions (C for system and apps; E for data and working) and the old drive will also need a designation -- which would be D if all is right in the world.] I want to install a 2nd HDD (WD 120GB) either as slave on the same cable, or on the second cable as master or slave (see below). I also have a CDRW drive (as G), and will be looking to install a combo DVD/CDRW *or* a DVD writer "soon". So provision needs to be made for both these optical drives too. You sure the effect on the cheap plonk supply is warranted ? |-( For compatibility with another ("managed") system, I need to keep the same HDD partitions, Why ? Thats a madly complicated config. See above. See above. but would see C and D as being on the present master HDD with E and F on the new one, if this is possible. Thats pretty mad too. You'd normally want to have the boot drive on the new drive, just because it would normally be much faster than the original old dinosaur 20GB drive. But that would mean partitioning the new drive as say 20GB for system and applications and the rest for data and working space. Yes, but that is normally the best approach if you say want to ghost the OS and apps boot partition before doing any install or service pack install, so you can restore gracefully from the image if it all goes completely pear shaped. Basically have a reasonable sized OS and app partition thats reasonably quick to image to encourage you to image it just before the install and to not just decide that the risk is small with the install of something and dont bother to image the OS and app partition first. Sounds very reasonable, and is pretty much what I had in mind. The main uncertainty is assigning the size of that partition. Yeah, thats the main downside with more than one partition per physical drive, getting the sizes right. Its never easy to predict what would be best over time with the usual demand for more space seen with almost everything, in spades with the OS and apps boot partition. (What did Bill say? "640KB is enough for anyone"? Thats very unkind |-) My present C is roughly 5GB, and it's bloody tight. Yeah, much too small in my opinion. 20GB may do for awhile I guess. Yeah, thats what I currently use, and thats with XP which needs more room than ME. Thats another thing you should really be thinking about with a big reconfig like this. It might not be a bad time to change to XP too. I've not had any regrets. How good is the compression with Ghost or Drive Image for images of sparsely populated partitions? Both are excellent and there isnt much in it image file size wise. [One problem I thought may exist with that approach may not exist if I've understood one of your comments further down (q.v.).] Not into those greasy greek abbreviations thanks. An alternative that would be nearly as convenient would be to have C and F on the present drive with D and E on the new one. I'd bin that complicated scheme myself. I'm happy to bin F, but I need E. Spell out why. See above -- and it's really becoming irrelevant anyway, if I'm starting to understand all this. Yeah, looks like you do. So, can I have C and E on the new [let's assume master] drive with D on the old one as slave? Yes. With the Win9x/ME family you control that with the type of partition you create. Primary dos partitions get a letter first, then logical drives within extended dos partitions get lettered after that, and with both sets, the physical boot drive gets lettered before the other drive. So you can get that result by having a primary dos partition on the old drive. You have to have one on the new drive to boot from, so that will see the C and D letters allocated the way you want and the rest of the new drive will have to be a logical drive in an extended dos partition and so it will get the E letter, because its not a primary dos partition. That's good, and basically solves that aspect. In fact, any combination that left C on the present master (no doubt the only possibility anyway!) Nope, you can have it on the 120GB drive and should. Okay, okay... ;-) and E plus another partition on the other drive, would be acceptable (though that may mean some playing around with existing batch files if the CDRW drive designation is changed, and I would prefer not to have to do that -- but it could be done.) You really should cut to the chase and have a much simpler partitioning scheme, and the boot drive on the new 120GB drive. There is also the issue of the best allocation of the HDDs and the optical drive(s) to the cables. I've seen this recommended and argued both ways: (1) keep the HDDs separate from the CDs so that HDD activity is not so likely to interfere during CD writing; and (2) put the CDs on separate cables so direct copy will work better. The short story is that you are unlikely to be able to pick the difference between those two configs with a proper double blind trial and so its normally best to do whats mechanically more convenient, and thats usually with both hard drives on the same ribbon cable, and both optical drives on the same ribbon cable. Just because both hard drives are normally in the 3.5" bay stack and both optical drives are normally in the 5" bay stack and most ribbon cables dont have enough space between the drive connectors to mix drives in different bay stacks. Sounds reasonable. I was just a bit concerned about whether the CD drives would do CD to CD copy reliably if both on the same cable Yep, modern burnproof burners are fine with that. (bearing in mind the 4100 is only a P3 1.1GHz machine). I did it fine in a 586/133. But I certainly don't want to get into the ribbon stretching game! Yeah, you can get one made for the other config but its not worth the farting around. The main uses would be: 1. Existing drive stays as the system/applications drive (C), Not a good idea, see above. and may contain a second partition (D or F) that would serve as a data backup area. Its generally best to have the data backup on a different physical drive to the drive that its backing up, obviously so you dont lose everything on a single drive failure. That was the idea! The data on E on the new drive and the backup on D on the old one. Yes, except for the image of the boot OS and app partition, done to allow a convenient step back to the situation before an install. Thats fine onto another partition on the big new drive, because its not protecting against drive failure. Yeah. I was assuming there wouldn't be room on the old 20GB anyway, which is another reason why my original plan involved keeping that as the primary drive. If the image files are happy on the same physical drive, there's no problem. If you do want to be able to recover quickly from a hardware failure by just restoring the boot OS and apps partition, its best to put that on CDs or DVDs because you can see both hard drives killed by a power supply failure or just theft of the system etc. Good idea. Will do that too. (Eventually. ;-) Its not actually a fantastically viable approach tho because with the standard Win config, the email files and other stuff like shortcuts and favorites are normally on the boot partition too and so the image file will be well out of date by the time you want to use the image file for hard drive failure or theft. I back up mail and favourites regularly anyway. (Favourites routinely [because I want to transfer them between the two machines I mentioned] and Mail when I think of it -- at least once/month.) Yeah, I keep all of both and it'd be a complete pain in the arse to lose the most recent stuff with either. What you can do is put the image of that partition on the CDs or DVDs and in addition use a real backup prog to save whats changed to CDs since the image file was created. Then on say a hard drive failure, you restore the image file, then restore the real incremental backup too and you are back where you were when the last incremental backup was done. Certainly worth thinking about. I'm using simple old XCOPY for backups at the moment. Maybe a dedicated backup program would be worth it. (I still haven't found out how to backup (or even copy) MSIE offline files with XCOPY, or anything else I've tried!) xxcopy will do it fine. Nothing to do with MS, www.xxcopy.com And the stuff thats absolutely irreplaceable should be on multiple CDs as well. Pretty well *all* my junk is on 4 (if not 6 CDs -- *finding* the "irreplaceable" will be the problem if the time comes. 8-) Yeah, worth giving one set to a mate etc for safe keeping, just in case the place burns down etc. In your case you could leave them down the pub if you have no mates. They're all at the pub anyway. Yeah, good point. These are best done separately to the image of the boot partition. 2. New drive would be the main working drive (E) Its normally best as the boot drive too, because it will be much faster. but would also contain a partition to hold maybe 2 or 3 "Ghosts" of the system drive (probably at least a vanilla system installation No reason why that cant be on the physical drive since its mostly protecting you against a service pack install ****ing the boot drive up or an app install etc doing the same. Okay, here's where I may have been too pessimistic. I thought the clones of C would have to be on a different physical drive. Clones do, image files dont. Image files are generally best. You can keep more than one, with compression being possible with image files but not with clones, with only a slightly slower restore time if you need to do a restore. Ha! My jargon wasn't quite with it. Yes, I'm basically thinking image files in most of this. My mistake thinking clones~images. Are you saying the "Ghosts" can simply be "files" on a separate partition of the same physical drive as C? Yes, ghost image files can be. You can use image files, or true partition clones. Normally image files are best. If so, that certainly would make a difference to my approach, and remove that objection to having the new drive as the master. Yeah, its generally the best approach with a single drive too. Two partitions, one for the boot OS and apps partition so you can image that before installs to make it easy to go back if the install goes pear shaped, the other partition for all the data files and the image files. I just included this for the other pervers at this traffic that may only have one drive. But one other thought occurs: Dangerous business, can end in tears before bedtime. Doing it this way is going to mean a *lot* of thrashing of the drive whenever creating or using one of these images, given that it would mean the transfer of maybe 20GB of stuff from one place to another on the same physical drive each time. In practice that doesnt happen because the imaging programs buffer the image file in ram until a big chunk has been done and then dumps it into the image file in the second partition. You do notice a difference if you are cloning a partition instead of making an image file of it, but cloning isnt normally the best approach for various reasons. and a second one with the main application software freshly installed too). [Or maybe I don't really need a partition for that as the "Ghosts" are basically just files aren't they?] Correct. Image files are, anyway. You can also clone partitions and drives but there isnt normally any real point in doing that for backup. I was thinking of two or three clones of C he These are actually images, not clones. 1. Just the system and very basic stuff like drivers etc. installed. Yes, I normally do create a few images during an OS install. Mainly to minimise the effort if I stuff something up later in the apps install particularly, I can just restore an image instead of completely restarting the OS and apps install. I normally make the first image of just the OS itself, before any drivers are added, just because the addition of drivers can produce a mess with some hardware. Then when all the hardware drivers have been installed, image that before installing any of the apps. Just so that if that goes pear shaped, its easy to get back to the bare OS and drivers config. 2. The above plus the "standard" applications (MS Office, graphics, and basic utilities for mail, web, FTP etc.). Yep. And maybe, 3. The above plus other stable installations as they are required. (This one would be "temporary" in that it could be overwritten by new versions when other stuff is added. Yeah, I normally create an image before installing anything, and keep previous images too, basically because that simplifys things if the problem with the latest install doesnt become visible for a few days etc and it wont uninstall cleanly. I basically only delete images when I need more space for the latest one. No point in deleting any image until you need the space it occupys. As one of the world's great archivists, I'm completely happy with that approach. ;-) I'm thinking I should probably start with this one for my present working system so I can recover somewhat if I have problems with that fresh install approach.) That approach has its downsides, restoring that image before doing an additional install. Basically Win keeps quite a bit of stuff in the boot partition, email, favorites, shortcuts, all sorts of minor config stuff like what display format is used in particular folders etc. So you dont normally want to restore before a new install. No. I was thinking more about if I stuff up the new install I can at least go back to what I have now and ask you some more questions. It may not be the best config, but I can at least access News. :-) Yeah, very viable approach with a single PC. 3. The CDRW would mostly be used for backups and other copies of data from E, and also for backup copies of program CDs (and that may involve direct CD to CD copies in future when I get the second optical drive). I dont normally do it that way even when I do have the drives that allow that. Its generally best to have the copy program just copy it to the hard drive auto and use the same drive for both the original and the copy. Modern burners are so much faster that that approach has little effect on the total copy time now. True. But you do have to swap CDs that way, and it's been my habit to do this sort of copying while doing other (non-computer) things. You'll find that with modern burners on lower horsepower PCs like that that the system isnt that usable while the copy is being done, very sluggish, and that the burn is over so quickly that I dont usually try to do much while it happens. That's what I was getting at. I don't try to do *anything* on the PC while burning CDs (and I still get too many coasters). OK, I dont ever get those due to that. My "other (non-computer) things" are cooking dinner and having a glass or two (sometimes three, if there's enough left in the bottle %-) of red. Tho admittedly I copy CDs on the test machine now. I'll have to get one of those. Yeah, very convenient. I normally just ripple the machines down the chain, what used to be the main machine becomes the test machine and what used to be the test machine becomes the kitchen PC etc. I do have an old 486DX4-100, Fark, I've got a few P200 socket 7 systems that dont get used anymore. Even new celeron integrated motherboards dont cost much. Are you really that desperate a pov ? with the last version of Windows 95, buried here somewhere; but I doubt if that's up to the mark. Yeah, they're more trouble than they're worth. I dont even bother with socket 7 systems if I can avoid it, too much hassle with memory. [ Had visions of playing with Linux on it and maybe using it as a firewall/print server etc. I prefer a hardware router myself and I hardly ever print anything at all. But Linux has gone pretty much bloatware now too, so I doubt if it'll even handle that There are some stripped down versions that'll do fine. Not worth the farting around IMO compared with a hardware router tho. -- assuming it will start at all! ] Likely it will. So the thought of just loading the drives and coming back later to a job done instead of half done, is pretty appealing. Yes, but the system will be surprisingly sluggish with modern fast burners and a lower horsepower PC like that. I find it a bit irritating to even play freecell while the copy happens, let alone say browse newsgroups. Thats the main reason I copy CDs on the test machine. And you dont actually do that that much so there isnt any point in getting all anal about the time it takes anyway. It would usually only need to interact with C during program installations. And you cant normally even measure any difference in the total install time with the two drives on different ribbon cables for variour reasons. 4. A temporary consideration is the best (i.e. most convenient) way of getting nearly 8GB of data off the present E partition onto the new drive and into the new "E". Most convenient to use ghost or drive image. You appear to want to use that for boot partition backup anyway so you might as well use it for the reconfig at new hard drive install time too. I'm starting to see a lot of "gotchas" looming here for the neophyte! Yeah, well worth thinking thru the config before implementing it. You're gunna be using it for quite a while in the new config. And if it all goes pear shaped I won't have access to the USENET "help desk" of collective wisdom to sort it out! Yeah, I'd never go back to just one PC again voluntarily. So convenient to be able to drop an error message into google and resolve it in minutes. (That's one reason I was hoping for a pointer to a "recipe book" of instructions for doing this sort of thing. Trouble is that there isnt much agreement on the best config so thats not that feasible. You dont even get much of that with the basic question of the best partitioning for a single and dual drive configs. I wasn't thinking so much about that now as about how's the easiest way to get from what I've got (C, D, E, and F on one 20GB physical drive) to a new config with C and E on the new 120GB drive, "leaving" D on the old drive as slave. Bearing in mind that my resources are Windows ME and Partition Magic 6. I'd get ghost 2003 for the convenience. It costs peanuts as part of SystemWorks Pro 2003 on ebay if you have nutty ideas about paying for it. Must be SystemWorks Pro tho, SystemWorks doesnt include ghost. I clearly need to give the actual approach rather more thought. The idea of installing a second HDD seemed pretty simple at the time. 8-) Yeah, computing has always been like that |-) I can think of possibilities with PM, but it may come down to CD shuffling in the end. :-( Nope, it never does. Just get ghost and use it for the reconfig. Hints, guidance, recommendations, links most welcome. Thanks very much for your input, Rod. No probs, happy to keep discussing the detail for as long as it takes. Being Friday night, I won't try to go into more detail just now. ;-) Yeah, funnily enough I wondered how intelligible this post would be when I saw it in the newsgroup. Cant imagine why for the life of me |-( But I'll be back! Thats what arsehole Dougy Mac said. And thanks again for your help. No probs. |
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"Rod Speed" wrote in message ... "Phred" wrote in message ... In article , "Rod Speed" wrote: Phred wrote in message ... Rod Speed wrote Phred wrote I'm looking for a simple recipe to ensure success when trying to install a second HDD on a Dell Dimension 4100 under Windows ME [...] (or even just mention of "gotchas" to avoid would be helpful . Current 20GB drive is partitioned C, D, E, F using PM 6.0 Urk. Thats mad. Yeah. Well, I'm inclined to agree and in fact I'd be more than happy to ping off that "F". But C is not negotiable; D is the CDROM drive on that "managed" machine I mentioned so is unchangeable; You appeared to be saying that the 20GB drive had been paritioned into 4 partititions. Yes. Which version is due to too much cheap plonk ? Dunno about "too much". [We had a farmhand years ago from the other side of the planet, but still very practical. He always said you can't have too much to drink because you fall down when you've had enough. ] However, I admit that most things after dinner are probably influenced by cheap plonk to some extent. %-) so I need a "drive" E to align with the other's data drive Cant understand this bit. There are two machines: mine and the corporate "managed" machine. I have no influence over the config of the latter, but it would be very convenient for the sort of stuff I do (and the nifty little batch utils etc. I've written to facilitate this) if I could keep some sort of one to one relationship as I have now. Essentially, this comes down to having a drive "E" for data and working, and from what you've said below there's probably no problem here if I use the new drive with primary C and logical E and the old one as primary D. (The complication will be getting the present C, D, E, and F on the old drive combined/deleted/transferred/whatever to achieve the desired new config with two physical drives, without screwing things up.) and (because I'm running Windows ME) I assume I can only get that by having a D of my own somewhere on a HDD (the slave?). Or this. Just saying that under Windows ME I assumed I would have to have C and D in order to have E (i.e. I can't just have C and E). [This is rather irrelevant anyway, as we're both now agreed that the new drive will have to have two partitions (C for system and apps; E for data and working) and the old drive will also need a designation -- which would be D if all is right in the world.] I want to install a 2nd HDD (WD 120GB) either as slave on the same cable, or on the second cable as master or slave (see below). I also have a CDRW drive (as G), and will be looking to install a combo DVD/CDRW *or* a DVD writer "soon". So provision needs to be made for both these optical drives too. You sure the effect on the cheap plonk supply is warranted ? |-( For compatibility with another ("managed") system, I need to keep the same HDD partitions, Why ? Thats a madly complicated config. See above. See above. but would see C and D as being on the present master HDD with E and F on the new one, if this is possible. Thats pretty mad too. You'd normally want to have the boot drive on the new drive, just because it would normally be much faster than the original old dinosaur 20GB drive. But that would mean partitioning the new drive as say 20GB for system and applications and the rest for data and working space. Yes, but that is normally the best approach if you say want to ghost the OS and apps boot partition before doing any install or service pack install, so you can restore gracefully from the image if it all goes completely pear shaped. Basically have a reasonable sized OS and app partition thats reasonably quick to image to encourage you to image it just before the install and to not just decide that the risk is small with the install of something and dont bother to image the OS and app partition first. Sounds very reasonable, and is pretty much what I had in mind. The main uncertainty is assigning the size of that partition. Yeah, thats the main downside with more than one partition per physical drive, getting the sizes right. Its never easy to predict what would be best over time with the usual demand for more space seen with almost everything, in spades with the OS and apps boot partition. (What did Bill say? "640KB is enough for anyone"? Thats very unkind |-) My present C is roughly 5GB, and it's bloody tight. Yeah, much too small in my opinion. 20GB may do for awhile I guess. Yeah, thats what I currently use, and thats with XP which needs more room than ME. Thats another thing you should really be thinking about with a big reconfig like this. It might not be a bad time to change to XP too. I've not had any regrets. How good is the compression with Ghost or Drive Image for images of sparsely populated partitions? Both are excellent and there isnt much in it image file size wise. [One problem I thought may exist with that approach may not exist if I've understood one of your comments further down (q.v.).] Not into those greasy greek abbreviations thanks. An alternative that would be nearly as convenient would be to have C and F on the present drive with D and E on the new one. I'd bin that complicated scheme myself. I'm happy to bin F, but I need E. Spell out why. See above -- and it's really becoming irrelevant anyway, if I'm starting to understand all this. Yeah, looks like you do. So, can I have C and E on the new [let's assume master] drive with D on the old one as slave? Yes. With the Win9x/ME family you control that with the type of partition you create. Primary dos partitions get a letter first, then logical drives within extended dos partitions get lettered after that, and with both sets, the physical boot drive gets lettered before the other drive. So you can get that result by having a primary dos partition on the old drive. You have to have one on the new drive to boot from, so that will see the C and D letters allocated the way you want and the rest of the new drive will have to be a logical drive in an extended dos partition and so it will get the E letter, because its not a primary dos partition. That's good, and basically solves that aspect. In fact, any combination that left C on the present master (no doubt the only possibility anyway!) Nope, you can have it on the 120GB drive and should. Okay, okay... ;-) and E plus another partition on the other drive, would be acceptable (though that may mean some playing around with existing batch files if the CDRW drive designation is changed, and I would prefer not to have to do that -- but it could be done.) You really should cut to the chase and have a much simpler partitioning scheme, and the boot drive on the new 120GB drive. There is also the issue of the best allocation of the HDDs and the optical drive(s) to the cables. I've seen this recommended and argued both ways: (1) keep the HDDs separate from the CDs so that HDD activity is not so likely to interfere during CD writing; and (2) put the CDs on separate cables so direct copy will work better. The short story is that you are unlikely to be able to pick the difference between those two configs with a proper double blind trial and so its normally best to do whats mechanically more convenient, and thats usually with both hard drives on the same ribbon cable, and both optical drives on the same ribbon cable. Just because both hard drives are normally in the 3.5" bay stack and both optical drives are normally in the 5" bay stack and most ribbon cables dont have enough space between the drive connectors to mix drives in different bay stacks. Sounds reasonable. I was just a bit concerned about whether the CD drives would do CD to CD copy reliably if both on the same cable Yep, modern burnproof burners are fine with that. (bearing in mind the 4100 is only a P3 1.1GHz machine). I did it fine in a 586/133. But I certainly don't want to get into the ribbon stretching game! Yeah, you can get one made for the other config but its not worth the farting around. The main uses would be: 1. Existing drive stays as the system/applications drive (C), Not a good idea, see above. and may contain a second partition (D or F) that would serve as a data backup area. Its generally best to have the data backup on a different physical drive to the drive that its backing up, obviously so you dont lose everything on a single drive failure. That was the idea! The data on E on the new drive and the backup on D on the old one. Yes, except for the image of the boot OS and app partition, done to allow a convenient step back to the situation before an install. Thats fine onto another partition on the big new drive, because its not protecting against drive failure. Yeah. I was assuming there wouldn't be room on the old 20GB anyway, which is another reason why my original plan involved keeping that as the primary drive. If the image files are happy on the same physical drive, there's no problem. If you do want to be able to recover quickly from a hardware failure by just restoring the boot OS and apps partition, its best to put that on CDs or DVDs because you can see both hard drives killed by a power supply failure or just theft of the system etc. Good idea. Will do that too. (Eventually. ;-) Its not actually a fantastically viable approach tho because with the standard Win config, the email files and other stuff like shortcuts and favorites are normally on the boot partition too and so the image file will be well out of date by the time you want to use the image file for hard drive failure or theft. I back up mail and favourites regularly anyway. (Favourites routinely [because I want to transfer them between the two machines I mentioned] and Mail when I think of it -- at least once/month.) Yeah, I keep all of both and it'd be a complete pain in the arse to lose the most recent stuff with either. What you can do is put the image of that partition on the CDs or DVDs and in addition use a real backup prog to save whats changed to CDs since the image file was created. Then on say a hard drive failure, you restore the image file, then restore the real incremental backup too and you are back where you were when the last incremental backup was done. Certainly worth thinking about. I'm using simple old XCOPY for backups at the moment. Maybe a dedicated backup program would be worth it. (I still haven't found out how to backup (or even copy) MSIE offline files with XCOPY, or anything else I've tried!) xxcopy will do it fine. Nothing to do with MS, www.xxcopy.com And the stuff thats absolutely irreplaceable should be on multiple CDs as well. Pretty well *all* my junk is on 4 (if not 6 CDs -- *finding* the "irreplaceable" will be the problem if the time comes. 8-) Yeah, worth giving one set to a mate etc for safe keeping, just in case the place burns down etc. In your case you could leave them down the pub if you have no mates. They're all at the pub anyway. Yeah, good point. These are best done separately to the image of the boot partition. 2. New drive would be the main working drive (E) Its normally best as the boot drive too, because it will be much faster. but would also contain a partition to hold maybe 2 or 3 "Ghosts" of the system drive (probably at least a vanilla system installation No reason why that cant be on the physical drive since its mostly protecting you against a service pack install ****ing the boot drive up or an app install etc doing the same. Okay, here's where I may have been too pessimistic. I thought the clones of C would have to be on a different physical drive. Clones do, image files dont. Image files are generally best. You can keep more than one, with compression being possible with image files but not with clones, with only a slightly slower restore time if you need to do a restore. Ha! My jargon wasn't quite with it. Yes, I'm basically thinking image files in most of this. My mistake thinking clones~images. Are you saying the "Ghosts" can simply be "files" on a separate partition of the same physical drive as C? Yes, ghost image files can be. You can use image files, or true partition clones. Normally image files are best. If so, that certainly would make a difference to my approach, and remove that objection to having the new drive as the master. Yeah, its generally the best approach with a single drive too. Two partitions, one for the boot OS and apps partition so you can image that before installs to make it easy to go back if the install goes pear shaped, the other partition for all the data files and the image files. I just included this for the other pervers at this traffic that may only have one drive. But one other thought occurs: Dangerous business, can end in tears before bedtime. Doing it this way is going to mean a *lot* of thrashing of the drive whenever creating or using one of these images, given that it would mean the transfer of maybe 20GB of stuff from one place to another on the same physical drive each time. In practice that doesnt happen because the imaging programs buffer the image file in ram until a big chunk has been done and then dumps it into the image file in the second partition. You do notice a difference if you are cloning a partition instead of making an image file of it, but cloning isnt normally the best approach for various reasons. and a second one with the main application software freshly installed too). [Or maybe I don't really need a partition for that as the "Ghosts" are basically just files aren't they?] Correct. Image files are, anyway. You can also clone partitions and drives but there isnt normally any real point in doing that for backup. I was thinking of two or three clones of C he These are actually images, not clones. 1. Just the system and very basic stuff like drivers etc. installed. Yes, I normally do create a few images during an OS install. Mainly to minimise the effort if I stuff something up later in the apps install particularly, I can just restore an image instead of completely restarting the OS and apps install. I normally make the first image of just the OS itself, before any drivers are added, just because the addition of drivers can produce a mess with some hardware. Then when all the hardware drivers have been installed, image that before installing any of the apps. Just so that if that goes pear shaped, its easy to get back to the bare OS and drivers config. 2. The above plus the "standard" applications (MS Office, graphics, and basic utilities for mail, web, FTP etc.). Yep. And maybe, 3. The above plus other stable installations as they are required. (This one would be "temporary" in that it could be overwritten by new versions when other stuff is added. Yeah, I normally create an image before installing anything, and keep previous images too, basically because that simplifys things if the problem with the latest install doesnt become visible for a few days etc and it wont uninstall cleanly. I basically only delete images when I need more space for the latest one. No point in deleting any image until you need the space it occupys. As one of the world's great archivists, I'm completely happy with that approach. ;-) I'm thinking I should probably start with this one for my present working system so I can recover somewhat if I have problems with that fresh install approach.) That approach has its downsides, restoring that image before doing an additional install. Basically Win keeps quite a bit of stuff in the boot partition, email, favorites, shortcuts, all sorts of minor config stuff like what display format is used in particular folders etc. So you dont normally want to restore before a new install. No. I was thinking more about if I stuff up the new install I can at least go back to what I have now and ask you some more questions. It may not be the best config, but I can at least access News. :-) Yeah, very viable approach with a single PC. 3. The CDRW would mostly be used for backups and other copies of data from E, and also for backup copies of program CDs (and that may involve direct CD to CD copies in future when I get the second optical drive). I dont normally do it that way even when I do have the drives that allow that. Its generally best to have the copy program just copy it to the hard drive auto and use the same drive for both the original and the copy. Modern burners are so much faster that that approach has little effect on the total copy time now. True. But you do have to swap CDs that way, and it's been my habit to do this sort of copying while doing other (non-computer) things. You'll find that with modern burners on lower horsepower PCs like that that the system isnt that usable while the copy is being done, very sluggish, and that the burn is over so quickly that I dont usually try to do much while it happens. That's what I was getting at. I don't try to do *anything* on the PC while burning CDs (and I still get too many coasters). OK, I dont ever get those due to that. My "other (non-computer) things" are cooking dinner and having a glass or two (sometimes three, if there's enough left in the bottle %-) of red. Tho admittedly I copy CDs on the test machine now. I'll have to get one of those. Yeah, very convenient. I normally just ripple the machines down the chain, what used to be the main machine becomes the test machine and what used to be the test machine becomes the kitchen PC etc. I do have an old 486DX4-100, Fark, I've got a few P200 socket 7 systems that dont get used anymore. Even new celeron integrated motherboards dont cost much. Are you really that desperate a pov ? with the last version of Windows 95, buried here somewhere; but I doubt if that's up to the mark. Yeah, they're more trouble than they're worth. I dont even bother with socket 7 systems if I can avoid it, too much hassle with memory. [ Had visions of playing with Linux on it and maybe using it as a firewall/print server etc. I prefer a hardware router myself and I hardly ever print anything at all. But Linux has gone pretty much bloatware now too, so I doubt if it'll even handle that There are some stripped down versions that'll do fine. Not worth the farting around IMO compared with a hardware router tho. -- assuming it will start at all! ] Likely it will. So the thought of just loading the drives and coming back later to a job done instead of half done, is pretty appealing. Yes, but the system will be surprisingly sluggish with modern fast burners and a lower horsepower PC like that. I find it a bit irritating to even play freecell while the copy happens, let alone say browse newsgroups. Thats the main reason I copy CDs on the test machine. And you dont actually do that that much so there isnt any point in getting all anal about the time it takes anyway. It would usually only need to interact with C during program installations. And you cant normally even measure any difference in the total install time with the two drives on different ribbon cables for variour reasons. 4. A temporary consideration is the best (i.e. most convenient) way of getting nearly 8GB of data off the present E partition onto the new drive and into the new "E". Most convenient to use ghost or drive image. You appear to want to use that for boot partition backup anyway so you might as well use it for the reconfig at new hard drive install time too. I'm starting to see a lot of "gotchas" looming here for the neophyte! Yeah, well worth thinking thru the config before implementing it. You're gunna be using it for quite a while in the new config. And if it all goes pear shaped I won't have access to the USENET "help desk" of collective wisdom to sort it out! Yeah, I'd never go back to just one PC again voluntarily. So convenient to be able to drop an error message into google and resolve it in minutes. (That's one reason I was hoping for a pointer to a "recipe book" of instructions for doing this sort of thing. Trouble is that there isnt much agreement on the best config so thats not that feasible. You dont even get much of that with the basic question of the best partitioning for a single and dual drive configs. I wasn't thinking so much about that now as about how's the easiest way to get from what I've got (C, D, E, and F on one 20GB physical drive) to a new config with C and E on the new 120GB drive, "leaving" D on the old drive as slave. Bearing in mind that my resources are Windows ME and Partition Magic 6. I'd get ghost 2003 for the convenience. It costs peanuts as part of SystemWorks Pro 2003 on ebay if you have nutty ideas about paying for it. Must be SystemWorks Pro tho, SystemWorks doesnt include ghost. Decide exactly what you want to do OS, partitions and that tool question wise and I'll do you a completely specific list how how to get there. I clearly need to give the actual approach rather more thought. The idea of installing a second HDD seemed pretty simple at the time. 8-) Yeah, computing has always been like that |-) I can think of possibilities with PM, but it may come down to CD shuffling in the end. :-( Nope, it never does. Just get ghost and use it for the reconfig. Hints, guidance, recommendations, links most welcome. Thanks very much for your input, Rod. No probs, happy to keep discussing the detail for as long as it takes. Being Friday night, I won't try to go into more detail just now. ;-) Yeah, funnily enough I wondered how intelligible this post would be when I saw it in the newsgroup. Cant imagine why for the life of me |-( But I'll be back! Thats what arsehole Dougy Mac said. And thanks again for your help. No probs. |
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