Rookie Question

[The Rainmaker]

I have a Gateway (vintage 1998) with a 300mhz PII processor and a 40G hard
drive. I installed WindowsXP, but there isn't enough room on the drive to
install SP2. I have maxed out the RAM, so that isn't an issue.

Can I add an external drive to increase my storage space, or should I
replace the HDD with a larger unit? And, is it a hassle copying files from
the old drive to the new one?

Also, any and all advice regarding this issue is welcome.

Thanks,

Rob

 

[Rod Speed]

I have a Gateway (vintage 1998) with a 300mhz PII processor and a 40G hard
drive. I installed WindowsXP, but there isn't enough room on the drive to
install SP2. I have maxed out the RAM, so that isn't an issue.

Can I add an external drive to increase my storage space,
Yes.

or should I replace the HDD with a larger unit?

Thats generally a better approach.

And, is it a hassle copying files from the old drive to the new one?

Not if you know what you are doing. The simplest approach is to use
Ghost 2003 as part of SystemWorks Pro 2003 off ebay for peanuts
or a pirate copy of True Image 8 if you are into that sort of thing.

 

[Arno Wagner]

I have a Gateway (vintage 1998) with a 300mhz PII processor and a 40G hard
drive. I installed WindowsXP, but there isn't enough room on the drive to
install SP2. I have maxed out the RAM, so that isn't an issue.

Can I add an external drive to increase my storage space, or should I
replace the HDD with a larger unit? And, is it a hassle copying files from
the old drive to the new one?

SP2 needed a ~6GB c: partition in my set-up. Unfortunately
MS seems to be unable to imageine space being avaliable anywhere
besides the c: drive. I imagine you have a first partition
that is too small

You can use Partition-magic (risky, costs money) or GNU
parted (less risky but more difficult to use, free) to modify
partition sizes without data-loss (if all works well).

Arno

 

[Eric Gisin]

I have XP MCE with SP2. It installed just fine on a 6GB NTFS volume. You did
something wrong.

 

[Eric]

I have a Gateway (vintage 1998) with a 300mhz PII processor and a 40G hard
drive. I installed WindowsXP, but there isn't enough room on the drive to
install SP2. I have maxed out the RAM, so that isn't an issue.

Can I add an external drive to increase my storage space, or should I
replace the HDD with a larger unit? And, is it a hassle copying files from
the old drive to the new one?

Also, any and all advice regarding this issue is welcome.

Thanks,

Rob

Hi,

Sure, adding an additional HDD is simple. Unless you have a specific reason
for it being external, I would just go with another internal drive. Check
your motherboard specs to see what type HDD controller interfaces are
supported.

As for which one to use as the primary drive with the OS installed, I'd go
with which one has the faster read/write time. If its the current 40 Gbyte
drive, then just keep the OS on it but uninstall any software that you can
later install on the new drive. In addition, move whatever data files
(photos, MP3's, ect) that you can/want over to new drive to free up more
room.

If the new drive has faster read/write, you'll need to copy the drive over.
Easy way is just with drive image software. After copying it over, then
just fdisk/format the old drive and use it a secondary data HDD.

Cheers,
-Eric

 

[Rod Speed]

I have XP MCE with SP2. It installed just fine
on a 6GB NTFS volume. You did something wrong.

Or it just meant that there is more than just XP on that 40G
drive which is very likely if its the only drive in that system.