Replacing Hard drives. Help needed.

[memly]

Ok here is my dilemma. I need guidance (please)

I have two 40Gig drives in my PC.
I am seriously running out of room and would like to dump all my CDRs onto my HD and bin em as I have bloody CDRs everywhere and I am starting to develop a phobia about them.

I have an 80Gig drive ready to install but no cable space so I would need to remove one of the drives already being used. (Unless there is an alternative?)

I have one drive partitioned: the C drive has my Windows XP on it, and the other half is mostly MP3s and samples.

The other drive (G) is not partitioned but has all my Games/music Apps/Cubase and Reason files/Zipped files etc.

I know there are imaging programs out there that will let me take an image of whats on a hard drive and it can be replicated onto a fresh HD.
How reliable is this?
What drive would you recommend I swap? The one with Windows on it or the one with all the games/music apps?

I also have a laptop as well. This is networked up at home, so maybe this could help?
I don't wanna piss around with it too much cos I know what happens when the registry gets corrupted.

Ideally I would just like to plug the HD in and go. But so far have not found IDE cables with more than 2 sockets on it.

If anyone has any disaster stories involving Imaging, I might consider forgetting the whole thing entirely. I have only managed within the last year or two to get a completely harmonious setup and I am so so so wary of fiddling too much.


I presume that a lot of imaging software is either freeware or shareware. Any recommendations?

[Kagey]

I used Casper XP, a free trial when my HD locked up, took bloody hours due to the drive being knackered, but it worked

Only problem with the trial is, unused space is not accoutned for, but a quick pass with Partion magic sorted that out

[Loopz]

I have an 80Gig drive ready to install but no cable space so I would need to remove one of the drives already being used. (Unless there is an alternative?)

There is an alternative...read on

I have one drive partitioned: the C drive has my Windows XP on it, and the other half is mostly MP3s and samples.

The other drive (G) is not partitioned but has all my Games/music Apps/Cubase and Reason files/Zipped files etc.

I know there are imaging programs out there that will let me take an image of whats on a hard drive and it can be replicated onto a fresh HD.
How reliable is this?

Very. As long as you chose wisely. Symantic Ghost is the one i've used for many years and i've cloned many machines with different operating systems. BUT...i think you have a better alternative...read on.

What drive would you recommend I swap? The one with Windows on it or the one with all the games/music apps?

Leave the Windows one and swap out the games/music apps one.

I also have a laptop as well. This is networked up at home, so maybe this could help?

Be usefull to back up your data from the one u r swaping out (maybe) but you will need lots of disk space.

I don't wanna piss around with it too much cos I know what happens when the registry gets corrupted.

dont worry about that

Ideally I would just like to plug the HD in and go. But so far have not found IDE cables with more than 2 sockets on it.

oh you are not looking hard enough. I (seriously) threw one away at work today and at one point they was breeding at home!

Questions to ask about your setup

You have your master IDE drive with windows on the Primary IDE channel. Am i right in presuming you have the 2nd hard drive on the Secondary IDE channel ? Where is your cdrom/dvd/burner or whatever ?

IF you get a two dual cables you can in theory of 4 logical drives. These can be a mixture of HDs and devices like cdroms etc. If you have just 2 harddrives at the moment then get a dual IDE cable and swap the one attached to the Secondary IDE channel. Then add the new HD as a slave and voila!

Let me know your setup and i will try and help you out.

[stargurl]

Depending on setup, you could also get an external (USB or Firewire) drive enclosure and chuck a new drive in there.

I've got 80gb in my Mac, and a 40gb in my PC (never use the PC though), and a 200gb external that I just hook up to whichever one I'm using at the time.

[memly]

You have your master IDE drive with windows on the Primary IDE channel. Am i right in presuming you have the 2nd hard drive on the Secondary IDE channel ? Where is your cdrom/dvd/burner or whatever ?

IF you get a two dual cables you can in theory of 4 logical drives. These can be a mixture of HDs and devices like cdroms etc. If you have just 2 harddrives at the moment then get a dual IDE cable and swap the one attached to the Secondary IDE channel. Then add the new HD as a slave and voila!

Thanks for the replies peeps.
To be honest I would rather ADD the HD to my already harmonious setup.

Steve. My IDE setup is as follows:

Primary IDE:
Master = HD (With XP on it)
Slave = DVD Burner

Secondary IDE:
Master = HD (My G drive)
Slave = DVD Rom

Ok I s'pose I could lose the DVD rom, but I was blissfully unaware you could get IDE cables with more than one slave on it. I have tried various sites and even visited Maplins...
If I did install the 80gig drive without removing anything I would only really use it for MP3s and samples and I wouldnt really install any Apps onto this.
I dont really want to go the imaging route. Maybe if someone could point me to a website that had a plethora of IDE cables available this could solve my dilemma

Would the HD lose speed if it was connected through a USB?

[Loopz]

Thanks for the replies peeps.
To be honest I would rather ADD the HD to my already harmonious setup.

Steve. My IDE setup is as follows:

Primary IDE:
Master = HD (With XP on it)
Slave = DVD Burner

Secondary IDE:
Master = HD (My G drive)
Slave = DVD Rom

Ok I s'pose I could lose the DVD rom, but I was blissfully unaware you could get IDE cables with more than one slave on it. I have tried various sites and even visited Maplins...
If I did install the 80gig drive without removing anything I would only really use it for MP3s and samples and I wouldnt really install any Apps onto this.
I dont really want to go the imaging route. Maybe if someone could point me to a website that had a plethora of IDE cables available this could solve my dilemma

Would the HD lose speed if it was connected through a USB?

aha. Ok you can get IDE cables with two connectors on there...one for Master and one for Slave. No more than that. Looks like you are full in your quota so i personally would lose your DVD ROM as your burner does the same function (unless you are copying DVDs ).

It would make sense to go with this

Primary IDE:
Master = HD (With XP on it)
Slave = either new or current G drive

Secondary IDE:
Master = either new or current G drive
Slave = DVD Burner

This was you are not slowing your primary controller down with DVD activity (always keep harddrives only on the primary controller).

You could use an external device but they will never be as fast as the internal babies.

Either way free up your Master HD (with XP on it) so it has no real data on there...just system stuff.

That any help ?

[memly]

Thnx Steve.
I think I will just swap the HD with the DVD Rom....
I do rip "on the fly" but I think I would rather have an extra 80gig and not bother with the imaging stuff.

Anyone want a DVD Rom?

[Kagey]

the drive that died was my system drive

did a perfect copy thats fully functional today