New Hard Drive

Dan Dowd · From: Paducah, KY, R.I.P.

My 5 gig hard drive is almost full. I would like to add another larger drive and make it my C drive and have the original C drive moved to another drive letter for storing files and downloads and wave files. Is there a way to move everything from my original C drive to the new C drive without re-installing everything? My computer is aprox 3 yrs old and is a Pentium II 266 speed with 128 meg of ram. It works great and I prefer to keep it around for a couple more years. I have used my CD RW for backing up files, but when it get filled to near capacity it closes the disk and wont let me read from it. I contacted HP about this and they said this is a normal thing and not to fill the disk up. Also it takes a long time to read from a CD RW when they get a lot of files on them, sometimes aprox 5 min.

Jack Stoner · From: Kansas City, MO

I added another drive to an IBM Aptiva a couple of years ago. It was a western digital and the software that came with the WD drive (EZ Disk) had a mass disk copy routine on it.

I made the original drive the "slave" and the new WD drive the "master". After the drive was physically installed, I ran the WD "EZ Disk" program and it initialized the new drive and then I copied everything on the old drive to the new one. My BIOS detected the new drive as the "C" drive. Windows assigned the drive letter for the original drive and it wasn't a problem.

Western Digital still has the disk drive utility program avilable on their web site, however I think they call it something other than EZ Disk now. It will work with all drives not just Western Digital's.

John Gretzinger · From: Canoga Park, CA

Don -

The other thing to remember when you do this is that the OS will name the drives in order. Unless you have your CD as something other than "D", it will get renamed "E". The result of this is that anything that points to "D" (registry entries) for it's files will fail (not terminal but annoying). You can call your extra drive something else when you install it, and thus leave your CD in it's original position if you want.

Have fun.

jdg

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Jack Stoner · From: Kansas City, MO

Windows will allow you to assign a specific letter to the CD Drives. I only have one hard drive on my Compaq and that option is "grayed" out on the hard drive properties.

I added a second CD (CD R/RW drive) and I had to manually go in and reassign the CD drive letters so my original CD Reader would be back to it's originally assigned letter.

Dan Dowd · From: Paducah, KY, R.I.P.

Thanks for all the expert info guys. I will probably have to give up my internal ZIP drive as I have 2 CD's(a burner and a player)
and all the plugs on the ribon cable will be filled by adding another Hard Drive. I have an external ZIP that could be pluged into the printer port, but thats where I have my MIDI 2 port SE plugged into (printer is a USB). I guess I could use a switcher for this. But with CD RW so cheap I will transfer all my ZIP disk stuff to CD's. By the way has anyone experienced the full CD RW problem I described in my original post.

9

Graham · From: Marmora, Ontario, Canada

Dan:
You can accomplish this by using the dos command "Xcopy". This will copy everything from one drive to another.
First, you would have to install the new drive and then use the letter assigned to it.
After you do the xcopy, change the cables on your hard drives, swapping your current "C" to the new one. Then start your computer and go into cmos setup and there change the hard drive set-up using the automatic hard drive detection section of cmos. then save and exit and your new hard drive should then be your "C" drive.
I believe the syntax for Xcopy is:

xcopy C Oh Well

*.* d

/s

Using the /s switch, it will automatically copy all directories and sub-directories from one drive to the other.

I haven't used it in a long time so maybe somebody else can verify this.

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Jim Smith · From: Midlothian, TX, USA

No, no, no!!! That xcopy command will NOT work to copy drives. Xcopy32, introduced in Windows 95, will do better but still will not get everything. Plus when you copy in DOS mode you lose the long file names and get files and directories like C:\Progra~1\... instead of C:\Program Files\...

I have used Norton's Ghost with excellent results. It copies an exact image from one to the other. You need to be sure both drives are formatted the same: FAT16, FAT32, etc. If you want to change them later, Partition Magic does that very well.

Graham · From: Marmora, Ontario, Canada

Jim:
Used xcopy when I went from a 1.1 to a 4.3 hd a few years (3-4). Probably why my directories in dos all read "Progra~1" etc. Only problem I had was the aggravation of swapping cables and re-setting up in the cmos. Still have both drives in my computer.

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Everett Cox · From: Marengo, OH, USA (deceased)

ALWAYS make sure you have a GOOD BOOTABLE floppy with all the stuff INCLUDING the CDROM DRIVER setup BEFOR doing a hard drive change. Not a bad idea to also have a backup of the Windows' Registry too.

If installing the new drive causes a different letter to be assigned to your other drives (cdrom or whatever), there are programs that will change Registry settings for you.

One I frequently use is 'Change of Address' that I downloaded (free) from ZDNET.COM.
http://www.zdnet.com/swlib/

Windows, itself, will do to copy ALL data from one drive to another. After preparing the new drive (format, etc.) and installing as whatever letter Windows assigns, use Windows Explorer to open the C: root directory. Select everything EXCEPT the 'swap file'. (If it's contained within a folder other than c:/, don't select that one yet.

Once the selection is set, COPY the group and paste to the new drive's root folder. Do to the 'swap file', one folder may remain to be copied. If so, open it and select all but that file and copy/paste to the new drive.

If your old drive was partitioned, the new one should also have similar partitions. The above procedure could then be used to copy/paste each one to the new drive(s).

Now, the cables and drive settings INSIDE the machine can be configured as required.

Dan Dowd · From: Paducah, KY, R.I.P.

Well, after reading all the help you folks gave me , I called PC Mall and ordered a new Western Digital 13.6 Gig Hard Drive ($134.32) on Friday. It arrived today (Saturday) and all there was, was a box with a drive in it and no screws to mount it. No how to book or paper telling me how to install it. So before starting I went to their web site as recommended here and downloaded a program called "Data Life Guard Tools V 2.2. Copied it to a flopy disk and took the cover off my Quantex 266 Computer. I removed the ribbon cable from the old drive and set the jumper to be a slave. Mounted the new drive with the jumper set to primary, plugged the drives in and crossed my fingers. I re-started the computer with the tools flopy disk and the screen lit up and asked if I wanted to copy from the old drive to the new. I said yes, and within about 1hr the new drive had everything that was on the old Hard drive. Rebooted and everything seemed OK. I right clicked on the new C drive in my computer and it told me how much space was left on my new drive, but did not show my old drive. So I shut it down and re booted and hit delete to get into the BIOS settings and saw my new drive was there but no slave. All I did was change the slave to auto detect and it all works great now. All the help you folks gave me here is responsible for my succes in this undertaking. I will wait for a while to make sure everything is working and then I will Reformat the old drive and use it to store MP3's, Waves and other backup files. Now if I can get you to show me how to play the steel. O well enough tech stuff for today. Thanks again

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