200G Hard Drive - Follow up

[Guest]

Folks:



I would like to ask a follow up question to the original that is available
below.

* If I already have important data on the Hard Drive (200G capacity on
an older machine that accesses only 36G) will I lose any of this information
after installing a controller card that allows my hard drive to eventually
gain access to all 200G of its total capacity ?



Thanks,
Jo.








------------------------------------------------- ORIGINAL
QUESTION -----------------------------------------------------------

Recently bought a 200G hard drive and slapped it into an older machine.
This older machine can only recognize 36 G of the HD.

* How can I force this older machine to recognize the entire 200 G
capacity of the hard drive ?

Someone suggested that I use some sort of controller
card.

Is this true & if so explain briefly
how the controller card solves the problem?

Thanks,
Jo.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

[Patrick Keenan]

Folks:



I would like to ask a follow up question to the original that is available
below.

* If I already have important data on the Hard Drive (200G capacity on
an older machine that accesses only 36G) will I lose any of this
information after installing a controller card that allows my hard drive
to eventually gain access to all 200G of its total capacity ?



Thanks,
Jo.

Data loss is always a possibility, so be sure the data is backed up and the
backups verified. Perhaps you'll get luck... or maybe you won't.

HTH
-pk

<snippage>

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

I would like to ask a follow up question to the original that is
available below.

* If I already have important data on the Hard Drive (200G
capacity on an older machine that accesses only 36G) will I lose any
of this information after installing a controller card that allows my
hard drive to eventually gain access to all 200G of its total
capacity ?

If your plan is to add an additional partition or partitions to the drive,
no you should not lose anything.

If your plan is to enlarge the existing partition, yes, you will lose
everything on the drive, unless you use third-party repartitioning software.

Either way, doing anything without having a backup of your important data
would be foolhardy. Regardless of what should happen, things *do* sometimes
go wrong, and usually at the worst possible time.

But the way you ask the question suggests that you don't already have a
regular backup procedure in place. If that's the case, you are leaving very
dangerously. It is always possible that a hard drive crash, user error,
nearby lightning strike, virus attack, even theft of the computer, can cause
the loss of everything on your drive. As has often been said, it's not a
matter of whether you will have such a problem, but when.