Installing additional SCSI hard drives

[Henri]

I have a 933 mHz PIII with a SCSI hard drive that is too small and
probably past it prime. A new, much larger, SCSI hard drive is in hand
but I would like to install it and make it the primary hard drive while
keeping the existing hard drive as a secondary hard drive for
non-critical storage.

My guess is that I want to 1) manually erase all of the W2K-Pro
operating system files from the existing hard drive while leaving all
other files on the old drive intact, 2) change the SCSI addresses for
the new and old hard drives to reflect which drive is going to be
primary; 3) boot the machine from a floppy and run FDISK (from the
floppy) to create the partitions desired on the new hard drive; 4) do a
new 'clean' OS install on the new primary hard drive; 5) reinstall
applications to an appropriate partition(s) on the new hard drive; and
6) copy any data files from the old hard drive to an appropriate
location(s) on the new hard drive.

My question is whether such a scheme will work? In particular, what
will happen to the existing partition drive lettering on the old hard
drive? Will they change automatically to follow the partition lettering
of the new hard drive? Will I have to somehow change the 'primary'
designation of the 'C' partition on the old hard drive before installing
the new hard drive? My experience with FDISK is that when it is used on
any hard drive it destroys all data on the drive.

All suggestions on how to proceed will be greatfully received and any
pointers about books or other references on such drive reinstallations
will be most appreciated.

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

I have a 933 mHz PIII with a SCSI hard drive that is too small and
probably past it prime. A new, much larger, SCSI hard drive is in hand
but I would like to install it and make it the primary hard drive while
keeping the existing hard drive as a secondary hard drive for
non-critical storage.

My guess is that I want to 1) manually erase all of the W2K-Pro
operating system files from the existing hard drive while leaving all
other files on the old drive intact, 2) change the SCSI addresses for
the new and old hard drives to reflect which drive is going to be
primary; 3) boot the machine from a floppy and run FDISK (from the
floppy) to create the partitions desired on the new hard drive; 4) do a
new 'clean' OS install on the new primary hard drive; 5) reinstall
applications to an appropriate partition(s) on the new hard drive; and
6) copy any data files from the old hard drive to an appropriate
location(s) on the new hard drive.

My question is whether such a scheme will work? In particular, what
will happen to the existing partition drive lettering on the old hard
drive? Will they change automatically to follow the partition lettering
of the new hard drive? Will I have to somehow change the 'primary'
designation of the 'C' partition on the old hard drive before installing
the new hard drive? My experience with FDISK is that when it is used on
any hard drive it destroys all data on the drive.

All suggestions on how to proceed will be greatfully received and any
pointers about books or other references on such drive reinstallations
will be most appreciated.

Is there a reason to do a re-installation instead of cloning the old
installation?

Your drive letters are likely to change but you can set them to
your liking by running diskmgmt.msc.

 

[Henri]

Is there a reason to do a re-installation instead of cloning the old
installation?

Your drive letters are likely to change but you can set them to
your liking by running diskmgmt.msc.

One reason is that I know how to reinstall W2K-Pro from scratch and
don't know how to clone an old installation.

How do I clone the old installation to the new drive? It sounds like
cloning would certainly make things easier. Point me to a book or guide
if the procedure is involved.

Thanks in advance for any assistance.

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

One reason is that I know how to reinstall W2K-Pro from scratch and
don't know how to clone an old installation.

How do I clone the old installation to the new drive? It sounds like
cloning would certainly make things easier. Point me to a book or guide
if the procedure is involved.

Thanks in advance for any assistance.

There are several easy ways to clone a disk. Here are two of them:

a) By using another PC:
- Install the two disks and the SCSI adapter in some other Win2000/XP PC.
- Use xcopy.exe with the appropriate switches to copy hidden files,
system files and permissions to the new disk.

b) By booting with a Bart PE CD
- Boot the machine with a Bart PE CD (www.bootdisk.com).
- Use xcopy.exe with the appropriate switches to copy hidden files,
system files and permissions to the new disk.

To make a Bart PE CD, you need a CD burner, a WinXP Professional
CD (but no licence number) and about three hours of your time.

To finish things off for a) and b), you must do this:
- Disconnect the old disk.
- Jumper the new disk to be the correct SCSI boot device.
- Boot the machine with your Win2000 CD.
- Get into Recovery Console.
- Run these commands:
fixboot
fixmbr
- Boot the machine normally.

After the first successful boot with the new disk, you can reconnect
the old disk and boot the machine normally.