Hard Drives

[Guest]

I'm not a real pro at computers but I do know a little. I want to prepare my
computer for winddows vista.
The problem is that widows vista requires 40GB of free space on the hard
drive.
I have Two hard drives. C &D. C only has 15GB. D has 129GB. Is there an easy
way of swaping the two Drives? Making D drive the main drive. Since I have a
large D drive I don't see a reason to update the C drive

 

[BigJim]

If that is what you are running I would prepare to buy a new system that is
going to be compatible with Vista.

 

[Mike Hall - MS MVP Windows Shell/User]

Unless you are planning on running Vista beta (not advisable if you have
only one production computer), the final release of Vista is some way off..
When Vista does finally make it to the shelves, you can load it straight
onto the larger of the two drives..

 

[woody]

Leave your C drive with XP in tact. If you want to try Vista Beta, install
it to your D drive. You can then dual boot XP and Vista, keeping your XP
installation unaffected if you want ot remove Vista. Since Vista is in
beta, it is ill advised to upgrade over your existing XP installation.

Woody

 

[JS]

Can you give us the specs on your PC. Processor, memory, video card, Etc.
You can use Belarc Advisor to help with this:
http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html

JS

 

[All Things Mopar]

Today, with great enthusiasm and quite emphatically,
=?Utf-8?B?cGhpbGlwbG9uZ29yaWE=?= laid this on an unsuspecting
readership ...

I'm not a real pro at computers but I do know a little. I want
to prepare my computer for winddows vista.
The problem is that widows vista requires 40GB of free space
on the hard drive.
I have Two hard drives. C &D. C only has 15GB. D has 129GB. Is
there an easy way of swaping the two Drives? Making D drive
the main drive. Since I have a large D drive I don't see a
reason to update the C drive

you want to prepare something that won't even exist for a year and
most likely won't be usable for two years? why? Is whatever you now
have giving you some trouble? please keep in mind that if you
aren't a computer hobbyist and think that a PC is intended solely
for doing useful work for you, why fix something that isn't broken?

but, to your questions, if that's all the space you have left, you
have bigger problems right now even without Vista. Hie thee to a
computer store and upgrade your system!

 

[Anna]

philiplongoria:
I tend to agree with the responses you've received to date indicating that
at this point in time, and given your present system, you shouldn't be
overly concerned with "getting ready for Vista". There's a long way to go.

But notwithstanding the forthcoming Vista OS, there is some merit in your
wanting (at this time) to establish your 129 GB HD as your booting C: drive
in lieu of your current C: HD of 15 GB. At least that's what I'm assuming
you would want to do when you say you're interested in "Making D drive the
main drive".

Unfortunately, there's no way you can physically "swap" the two drives so
that your present 15 GB drive would become the C: (boot) drive and your
larger HD would take on the D: (or other) drive letter assignment. In other
words, merely changing (switching) the drives' connections to the
motherboard's IDE controller (assuming that's what you possibly had in mind)
simply wouldn't work.

But there is a way - with, however, some possible negative implications...

Using a disk imaging program such as Symantec's Norton Ghost or Acronis True
Image (or similar programs) you could "clone" the contents of your 15 GB to
the larger HD. By so doing you would be transferring the operating system
and whatever other data is on that 15 GB onto the larger HD. The problem
with this is that the disk cloning operation would effectively delete *all*
the data that was on the larger HD prior to the disk cloning operation .The
resultant clone would be (for all practical purposes) a mirror image of your
smaller HD but of course you would have the utilization of the full disk
capacity of the larger drive together with the superior performance of that
latter HD as compared with the 15 GB one. Under those circumstances the
larger HD would be designated the C: HD. You could either dump the smaller
drive or use it as a secondary HD for some storage or backup purposes.

So assuming you could live with the current contents of your 129 GB HD being
wiped out, the preceding may hold some appeal for you.
Anna

 

[Yves Leclerc]

I'm not a real pro at computers but I do know a little. I want to prepare my
computer for winddows vista.
The problem is that widows vista requires 40GB of free space on the hard
drive.
I have Two hard drives. C &D. C only has 15GB. D has 129GB. Is there an easy
way of swaping the two Drives? Making D drive the main drive. Since I have a
large D drive I don't see a reason to update the C drive

I would not consider placing Vista on my PCs until Vista is a "retail"
product. Right now it is in "beta" version.

Also, it may not even work on your system. You need to first check the
'System Requirements" before starting any prep work.

 

[Yves Leclerc]

I'm not a real pro at computers but I do know a little. I want to prepare my
computer for winddows vista.
The problem is that widows vista requires 40GB of free space on the hard
drive.
I have Two hard drives. C &D. C only has 15GB. D has 129GB. Is there an easy
way of swaping the two Drives? Making D drive the main drive. Since I have a
large D drive I don't see a reason to update the C drive

I would not consider placing Vista on my PCs until Vista is a "retail"
product. Right now it is in "beta" version.

Also, it may not even work on your system. You need to first check the
'System Requirements" before starting any prep work.