may try separate internal harddrive

  • Thread starter Thread starter ko
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K

ko

Hello all,

Any thoughts or suggestions on what I will try to do will be read and
appreciated, thank you...

I have a Compaq Pressario with 900Athlon and 640mb ram. I installed
XP Pro with WinME dual-boot, D (XP Pro-ntfs) boot drive,logical,
extended; C WinME-fat32-the Primary partition. I primarily use XP
Pro, yet mistakenly did not allocate enough space (3.87gb-about 1.34gb
leftover) to drive D, while WinME has 33.4gb (using right at 10gb).
The computer's disk is 40gb.

What I may do is get another harddrive (Seagate 40GB internal),
install that, backup my C&D drive, then make sure my back up on the
Seagate is usable.
I want to re-install XP Pro, so then re-format my computer. I have
scanners & printers that run well with winME drivers. So far my Epson
1280 is showing weird color using the XP driver, even with the color
management driver, and I'm sure the color cartridge has adequate ink
levels.

So I'm thinking of allocationg about 8GB for winME (will clean out
some of those files) on the PC's hard drive, and leave the rest for XP
Pro, keeping it dual boot. I guess that sounds like a bit of moving
around for operating systems. The reason I'd want to keep winME is
primarily because of Outlook Express (email) and my documents, and
until I get my drivers/printers/scanners straight for XP Pro.

If you wanted to keep the above would you just let winME stay on the
separate hard drive and install just XP Pro? I'd hope the Seagate
wouldn't crap out on me after a few weeks-I've read mostly all good
reviews of these-and I know my computer's hard drive could die also,
just wondering about all this. I've had to re-install winME after a
virus or bug got to my computer 2 different times. The last time I
re-installed, my dial up network drivers were not there so I could not
get on the internet. Went to Microsoft's site for help but did not
know how to get these back, meanwhile I had bought a new XP Pro oem
disc, putting off the attempt at installing but after the network
drivers snafu that changed things.

Any advice on all this would be appreciated, thank you. A friend told
me that running XP Pro on the small amount of space was not good, even
though my computer management window says "healthy". I tend to agree
with my friend...

KO
 
http://home.kooee.com.au/kingull/xp.html?
That might help you but you certainly can use twin drives.

The Boot Magic and Partition Magic is simplicity.

You make two primary partititions.
One for each operating system.

You can only have one active partitionso;
Boot Magic simply makes the partition you wish to use active.
Then the opposite operating system partition becomes hidden.
 
since you'r not planning to get rid of WMe, why don't you use a partition
manager (like acronis , with free trial period in which you can do the
reorganisation)? It's very easy to use, never gave me probs.
then you don't need to reinstall things.
just make the fat32 partition smaller, and let the ntfs-part take over the
free space after that.
much easier and no probs.

but why keeping WMe ? outlook express works on XP too ?
and for the printer, well, perhaps contact Epson, or get another printer (
for the price of a Hd, you can easily buy 2 printers ;-))
 
Thanks dorian & Walter,

I thought about Partition Magic, and am rethinking that or Acronis with Boot
Magic instead of getting/installing another hard drive, which I don't really
need all the extra space. It does seem easier, but not being familiar with
partioning & the different programs to do this (except for what I've read on
the MS newsgroups-a big help to us who aren't sure), I hesitated.

I appreciate the link to Frank's XP Pro page-I just figured how to import
the folders-neat!!

I'll look into re-partioning the drives again, and see where that brings me.

Regards,
Kerry
 
Walter,

I downloaded the trial version of Acronis Disk Manager Suite-long download
if you don't have cable or broadband. After seeing how it worked, I went
ahead and purchased it. Like you said-fast, easy, and no problems. Thanks
again for the suggestions, VERY helpful...

Regards,
Kerry
 
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