Disabling hard drive

[Andrew Wilson]

Hello
Running Win XP with SP3, Exelstor and Maxter hard drives.
I have a 250GB and a 80GB hard drive. I use the 80GB hard drive to clone
from the 250GB hard drive every month using Norton Ghost. The 250GB drive is
set to boot in the BIOS list (80GB drive not selected at all).
Questions:
1) Should I disable the 80GB drive in Device Manager to avoid corruption and
just enable it when I want to Norton Ghost to it?
2) If I do disable it and the 250GB drive fails completely at some point how
would I enable the 80GB drive? If I selected this as the new boot drive in
start up BIOS would it automatically be enabled?
Many thanks
Andy

 

[Yousuf Khan]

Hello
Running Win XP with SP3, Exelstor and Maxter hard drives.
I have a 250GB and a 80GB hard drive. I use the 80GB hard drive to clone
from the 250GB hard drive every month using Norton Ghost. The 250GB drive is
set to boot in the BIOS list (80GB drive not selected at all).
Questions:
1) Should I disable the 80GB drive in Device Manager to avoid corruption and
just enable it when I want to Norton Ghost to it?
2) If I do disable it and the 250GB drive fails completely at some point how
would I enable the 80GB drive? If I selected this as the new boot drive in
start up BIOS would it automatically be enabled?
Many thanks
Andy

I'd say it would make no difference if disable to drive in Disk Manager.
Just leave it enabled.

Yousuf Khan

 

[glee]

I agree.

Me too. I would make sure that System Restore is turned OFF for that
drive, though.

 

[SC Tom]

Hello
Running Win XP with SP3, Exelstor and Maxter hard drives.
I have a 250GB and a 80GB hard drive. I use the 80GB hard drive to clone
from the 250GB hard drive every month using Norton Ghost. The 250GB drive
is set to boot in the BIOS list (80GB drive not selected at all).
Questions:
1) Should I disable the 80GB drive in Device Manager to avoid corruption
and just enable it when I want to Norton Ghost to it?
2) If I do disable it and the 250GB drive fails completely at some point
how would I enable the 80GB drive? If I selected this as the new boot
drive in start up BIOS would it automatically be enabled?
Many thanks
Andy

I'm going to play devil's advocate here and disagree with the gist of what
the others have suggested

By leaving the drive connected to the rest of the computer, you are taking
the chance of having it infected along with your system drive if you happen
to pick up some sort of nasty somewhere.
Another thing to consider is, if there's a lightning strike or power surge
anywhere in your area that affects your PC, it could take out both of your
drives, and then you'd have nothing to fall back on.
My suggestion would be to buy an external USB/Firewire/eSATA device
(depending on what ports you have installed on your PC), and either use the
drive you have or a new one to create your images on. The only time it
should be connected to your PC is when your are creating or restoring an
image; other than that, it should be powered down and unplugged from the
wall and the PC.

Of course, that's just my opinion and the method I use, and others will have
differing opinions, but that's OK. I've never lost an image yet, and can
rely on it if I need it. If I was REALLY OC/AR, I'd have copies off-site
like I did when I was working

 

[Andrew Wilson]

I'm going to play devil's advocate here and disagree with the gist of what
the others have suggested

By leaving the drive connected to the rest of the computer, you are taking
the chance of having it infected along with your system drive if you
happen to pick up some sort of nasty somewhere.
Another thing to consider is, if there's a lightning strike or power surge
anywhere in your area that affects your PC, it could take out both of your
drives, and then you'd have nothing to fall back on.
My suggestion would be to buy an external USB/Firewire/eSATA device
(depending on what ports you have installed on your PC), and either use
the drive you have or a new one to create your images on. The only time it
should be connected to your PC is when your are creating or restoring an
image; other than that, it should be powered down and unplugged from the
wall and the PC.

Of course, that's just my opinion and the method I use, and others will
have differing opinions, but that's OK. I've never lost an image yet, and
can rely on it if I need it. If I was REALLY OC/AR, I'd have copies
off-site like I did when I was working

Thanks everyone for your comments.
Tom
That's why I posed the question because I didn't know what to do for the
best. I didn't say this at the time but I also have a smaller USB hard drive
which I clone using Norton Ghost from time to time. This is disconnected and
stored when the ghost is complete.
Still don't know what to do for the best with the 80GB drive though.....
Thanks
Andy

 

[SC Tom]

Thanks everyone for your comments.
Tom
That's why I posed the question because I didn't know what to do for the
best. I didn't say this at the time but I also have a smaller USB hard
drive which I clone using Norton Ghost from time to time. This is
disconnected and stored when the ghost is complete.
Still don't know what to do for the best with the 80GB drive though.....
Thanks
Andy

As long as you have a separate backup device, then it really doesn't matter
what you do with the 80GB drive. As the others said, just leave it as is

 

[Good Guy]

Still don't know what to do for the best with the 80GB drive though.....

Personally I would get rid of it and buy an external USB Hard disk.
External HDs are getting cheaper day by day and you will do yourself
justice by getting one.

Alternatively, get hold of a 64GB flash drive but the but the relative
price ratio to GB won't make sense to get one for the job you want to do.


--
Good Guy
Website: http://mytaxsite.co.uk
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Forums: http://mytaxsite.boardhost.com
Email: http://mytaxsite.co.uk/contact-us

 

[Char Jackson]

Personally I would get rid of it and buy an external USB Hard disk.
External HDs are getting cheaper day by day and you will do yourself
justice by getting one.

I'd be happy if hard drive prices would just get back to where they
were before the floods.

 

[Char Jackson]

It has given a lift in the position and sale of SSD so it's not all bad.

Every dark cloud has a silver lining.

 

[glee]

I'm not sure that's neccessary. Ghost image files are data files that
are not subject to be in the System Restore cache.

System Restore will still be writing to the drive regardless, if
monitoring is on. On an old drive like this (80GB), I'd want as few
unnecessary writes as possible.

 

[glee]

Every dark cloud has a silver lining.

...and vice versa! ;-)