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JohnSDavison Certificates/Ratings/Crew Stations: "System Upgrade" 04-05-02, 12:16z  Hi, I'm in the process of upgrading my PC and have reached the point where I want to move the second hard drive from my old system to the new system. I'd appreciate it if someone here could advise on the best way to go about this. I'm very nervous about making the change as I had terrible problems when originally fitting the second drive on the old system - I ended up having to completely reload EVERYTHING from scratch. I don't want to end up with TWO unusable systems this time! The current situation is thus: OLD SYSTEM: running Windows 98 with a partitioned (via Partition Magic V4) hard drive as C: E: F: G: H: drives. The second hard drive is set up as the D: drive and is used specifically to hold data for one application. NEW SYSTEM: running Windows ME (I know, I know...) currently with an unpartitioned 40GB C: drive. What I'd like to know is: 1. What do I need to do to move the second hard drive from the old system to the new system? Do I have to use the "remove device" facility in the Device Manager before physically removing the disk from the old system or can I just take it out and the system will know it's no longer there (sort of the opposite of Plug 'n Play)? 2. Will the device letters on the old system stay as they are, or will those following the D: drive (now removed) all move up by one? 3. Will the data currently on the second hard drive still be accessible when I move it to the new system? Or will it get destroyed or otherwise made non-accessible in the process. I'll be backing it up first, but there are vast amounts of it (tens of gigabytes) and it would be nice not to have to restore it all after moving the disk. 4. Can I just install the second drive on the new system and let Plug 'n Play take care of everything? Or is there something else I should do? 4. I have an old version of Partition Magic (V4) which still does everything I need on Windows 98. Is it possible to still use this successfully under Windows ME on the new system to partition the C: drive? Or will I have to upgrade to the latest version (even more expense!). The new system improves everything (CPU speed, memory, disk space, and graphics capability) by at least a factor of four over the old system, so I'm really looking forward to getting FS2K2 up and running on it. Many thanks for any help you guys can give. Regards....John Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top

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Subject      Author      Message Date     ID      RE: System Upgrade Madape 04-05-02 1    RE: System Upgrade JohnSDavison 04-05-02 2    RE: System Upgrade BillC 09-12-02 5   RE: System Upgrade Mike_Greenwood 04-06-02 3    RE: System Upgrade JohnSDavison 04-06-02 4         RE: System Upgrade RobertVA 09-12-02 6

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Madape Certificates/Ratings/Crew Stations: 1. "RE: System Upgrade" 04-05-02, 13:02z  Hi John, >1. What do I need to do to move the second hard drive from >the old system to the new system? Do I have to use the >"remove device" facility in the Device Manager before >physically removing the disk from the old system or can I >just take it out and the system will know it's no longer >there (sort of the opposite of Plug 'n Play)? You dont have to use the Device Manager, just turn your PC off, remove the cable, and then the drive >2. Will the device letters on the old system stay as they >are, or will those following the D: drive (now removed) >all move up by one? Drive letters tend to be assigned by Windows, so they might change, each time I do a reinstall Windows always seems to change my drive letters, if it is a slave drive, it will more than likely be given the letter after the last device on your new PC >3. Will the data currently on the second hard drive still >be accessible when I move it to the new system? Or will it >get destroyed or otherwise made non-accessible in the >process. I'll be backing it up first, but there are vast >amounts of it (tens of gigabytes) and it would be nice not >to have to restore it all after moving the disk. Yes it still will be there, but you must understand that any installed programs on that drive will not work (i.e. FS2002), and will need to be reinstalled. Any other Data will be instantly accessable >4. Can I just install the second drive on the new system >and let Plug 'n Play take care of everything? Or is there >something else I should do? Yes. Just plug it in (and assign it the respective Master/Slave setting via the jumper on the back of the drive, refer to your HDD Manual for this). I suggest putting this Hard Disk on the secondary IDE Channel, as the Master Device, the BIOS and Windows will take care of the rest >4. I have an old version of Partition Magic (V4) which >still does everything I need on Windows 98. Is it possible >to still use this successfully under Windows ME on the new >system to partition the C: drive? Or will I have to >upgrade to the latest version (even more expense!). I havent had any experience with partition magic, so I'll let someone else chime in on that one Hope that helps! Sam Harvey sam@crew.flightadventures.com Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top

JohnSDavison Certificates/Ratings/Crew Stations: 2. "RE: System Upgrade" 04-05-02, 13:15z  Hi Sam, Thanks for that lightning fast reply! I feel happier about doing the change already. Incidentally, there are no programs on the second drive - it's all data - so hopefully no complications there. Regards....John Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top

BillC Certificates/Ratings/Crew Stations: 5. "RE: System Upgrade" 09-12-02, 10:51z  Hi John.. Long time no speak <g> Nice to 'see' you again..I am still envious of your visit to Meigs some years ago (is it that long ?) >>Will the device letters on the old system stay as they are, or will those following the D: drive (now removed) all move up by one?<< I can't add much to Sams's excellent reply, except to say that your second HD (the one you wish to move over) is probably configured as a 'Primary Partition' (since it appears on your 'old' system as D:, and takes precedence over your other partitions above C:). In this case it will probably appear as the same drive D: on your new system. As long as you're careful to make sure that the power is off (and in the case of newish motherboards this means that the power cable should really be unplugged at the rear before plugging in devices/cards, since these new boards do draw some power even when the system is off, and can be damaged) you shouldn't really have any problems. Some drives are also quite fussy over which IDE 40 way connector they use. You may have to try both your 'end' IDE connector (at the end of the ribbon cable, which is probably where your current HD is connected to) or the first one (further down the ribbon cable towards the Motherboard). As long as your 'new' system is working normally when booting up from its current HD, your 'new' second HD shouldn't make any difference to the running, but it will move all your drive letters D: upwards as you suspect, since you are now displacing those letters with your new drive D:. As Sam says, the data will not be affected, and you should be able to access it without problems, but any apps will need to be re-installed. Some apps read your bootable drive's MBR (Master Boot Record) or other records on your drive C: in order to check that they are on the same PC as the original installation. Others may not. The program you use to access this data will also need to be redirected to the new location of the data, of course. From your post, though, I suspect that you use this HD just for data. In that case, go for it ! If you do hit a problem, don't write anything to this drive until you sort it out. If all looks well, try writing a simple, expendable file to your new drive first, before risking any data. Just yell if you have any problems. Hope that helps. Regards Bill -= VPC OffLine Reader Version 1.1.0.0 =- Registered to: Bill Cusick -OLR.PL v1.76- Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top

Mike_Greenwood Certificates/Ratings/Crew Stations: 3. "RE: System Upgrade" 04-06-02, 04:41z  Hi John, As Sam said, moving a drive, especially one with only data, is a snap. However he suggested that you use the second IDE channel and set it up as a master. Chances are very good that your new system will have a CD-Rom drive already occupying that spot. I'd suggest that you change the jumpers to make it a slave and put it on the same cable as your primary drive. You should have no complications from that. As far as partition magic, I'm pretty sure version 4 will not work with Me. I tested Me and recall folks not being able to use ver 4. So, you wind up with a couple of options. Buy the latest PM and partition away, *OR* buy XP and partition the drive the way you want during the setup process. I highly recommend the latter! Good luck with the new rig! **** VPC OffLine Reader Version 3.0.4.0 **** ++++ Registered to: Mike Greenwood ++++ **** OLR.PL Build 1.73 **** Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top

JohnSDavison Certificates/Ratings/Crew Stations: 4. "RE: System Upgrade" 04-06-02, 07:25z  Hi Mike, You're right - my new system has a CD burner and a DVD drive so I'll have to jumper one of them as slave when I put the new drive in. I've now also had a response from PowerQuest tech support about Partition Magic V4 and Windows ME and they confirm it won't work. There's a relatively inexpensive upgrade option to the latest version (V7)so I'll go with that for now. XP will have to wait a bit longer. Thanks for your help. Regards....John Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top

RobertVA Certificates/Ratings/Crew Stations: 6. "RE: System Upgrade" 09-12-02, 21:22z  I hear it isn't a good idea to put CD drives on the same port as a hard drive, as all devices on the port are held back to the speed of the electronics in the slower device. Supposedly that would greatly reduce the speed of the hard drive, especially if it is one of the DMA type. I have my CD R/W and DVD drives on the secondary IDE port, and two hard drives on my primary IDE port. To keep the drive letters of my CD and DVD drive from shifting, I used the Windows 98 device manger to assign higher letters so there would be plenty of room to add things like hard drive partitions that are less flexable and insist upon being in a continuous group starting with C:. this must be done before installing ANY othoer software that uses the CD, as many programs access data files on the CD by a drive letter recorded in a registry entry that is created when the individual program is installed. To avoid having to get out my Windows CD every time I pluged someting into my USB port I copied all the .CAB files, useing DOS, to a directory in a hard disk partition and installed Windows from the hard drive. Now, instead of asking for the Windows 98 CD, the popup already shows the propper hard drive folder and I just have to click the button on the poppup. Putting the swap file on that partition keeps it from generating extra file fragmentation also. I seem to loose the capaility to run several of my favorite out of print applications each time I step up to a new Windows version, so I probably woun't switch to Windows XP until I want to run an application that refuses to run on an earlier version of Windows. With the need to have addition storage space, especialy for multiple boots if access to earlier versions of Windows is desired, and the need to replace a couple of utilities; the cost of the Windows XP updates is only a fraction of the expence. Robert Near KORF Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top

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