Moving 80 gigs from one spot on a USB drive to another spot on the same drivee

[mm]

Moving 80 gigs from one spot on a USB mechanicial hard drive to
another spot on the same drivee

I have a 500gig MyBook, USB external drive by WD, and I have to move
80 gigs from a FAT32 primary partition to a FAT32 logical partition,
to make a slot for a new bootable primary partition, since I'm only
allowed 3 and I already have 2. (Yes, I didn't plan well enough.)

A) Is there some clever partitioning program that can just leave the
data in place and make it into a new logical partion within a new
extended partition? Even thought this data is at the beginning of
the drive? I have no extended partition now, but would have to make
one somewhere for sure.

B) If A won't work and I have to move the data, which would be faster:

1) to copy the data from the current partition to the new logical
partition, or
2) to copy the data to a folder or new partition in my internal
drive, an 80 Gig, WD PATA drive; and then copy it back again.

I've gotten the impression the second might be faster and easeier,
because to copy from one place to another on the same drive means an
awful lot of head/tone arm movement, back and forth, back and forth;
but to use two drives leaves the head in almost the same place all the
time, just moving graduallly through the partition. That it might be
so much better it woudl be better to make the move twice, to the other
drive and back again, than to do so on one drive.

I have one gig of ram though I could put in another 500 meg of ram if
it will help. I have USB2.

What should I do?

Thanks.

 

[Hot-Text]

Move is move it all take time, The more GB you move,
The more time it takes... And your ram is just fine!

(Yes, we all didn't plan well enough the first time)
[And when we thank are plan are just right... We see we needed to plan just
a little bit more!]

 

[PCR]

Moving 80 gigs from one spot on a USB mechanicial hard drive to
another spot on the same drivee

I have a 500gig MyBook, USB external drive by WD, and I have to move
80 gigs from a FAT32 primary partition to a FAT32 logical partition,
to make a slot for a new bootable primary partition, since I'm only
allowed 3 and I already have 2. (Yes, I didn't plan well enough.)

It doesn't look to me you are creating a slot with either of the plans
you propose. You have to move the Primary Partition into an existing
Extended Partition -- not create a new one. An Extended Partition is
itself actually a non-bootable Primary Partition which is a container
for multiple Logical Partitions. The Extended Partition counts toward
the maximum of four Primary Partitions that are allowable per hard disk.
You actually can have multiple Extended Partitions, but it makes no
sense. You really just want one container holding a bunch of Logicals.

What currently is on the hard drive in addition to the 2 Primaries? You
are allowed 4 Primaries, one of which may be an Extended Partition
container.

A) Is there some clever partitioning program that can just leave the
data in place and make it into a new logical partion within a new
extended partition? Even thought this data is at the beginning of
the drive? I have no extended partition now, but would have to make
one somewhere for sure.

B) If A won't work and I have to move the data, which would be faster:

1) to copy the data from the current partition to the new logical
partition, or
2) to copy the data to a folder or new partition in my internal
drive, an 80 Gig, WD PATA drive; and then copy it back again.

I've gotten the impression the second might be faster and easeier,
because to copy from one place to another on the same drive means an
awful lot of head/tone arm movement, back and forth, back and forth;
but to use two drives leaves the head in almost the same place all the
time, just moving graduallly through the partition. That it might be
so much better it woudl be better to make the move twice, to the other
drive and back again, than to do so on one drive.

I have one gig of ram though I could put in another 500 meg of ram if
it will help. I have USB2.

What should I do?

Thanks.

--
Thanks or Good Luck,
There may be humor in this post, and,
Naturally, you will not sue,
Should things get worse after this,
PCR
(e-mail address removed)

 

[PCR]

[.......]
An Extended Partition is
itself actually a non-bootable Primary Partition which is a container
for multiple Logical Partitions....

Perhaps "non-booting" would be a better term than "non-bootable"
because an OS within a logical drive inside an Extended Partition
can be booted using the boot loader (e.g. ntldr for WinNT/2K/XP)
that can be in the Boot Sector of any one of the Primary Partitions.
IOW, in WinXP, one can have the MBR of the drive with the highest
boot priority (the "boot drive") pass control to the Primary Partition
marked "active" on that drive, and the boot.ini boot menu in that
active partition can point to an OS residing in ANY partition -
including a
logical drive within the Extended Partition - and boot load that OS.
I expect that the same flexibility exists for WinVista and Win7. The
restriction imposed on OSes residing on logical drives within Extended
Partitions is that their boot loader must be on one of the Primary
Partitions.

The implication of this is that an OS clone can reside anywhere in
the system - on any partition (Primary or Extended) and on any enabled
internal hard drive - and it can be booted to running status without
an intermediate "restoration" step needed for OS "images". I believe
this
also includes external eSATA hard drives if the motherboard has an
eSATA controller.

*TimDaniels*

I didn't want to risk the danger of XP/Vista/Win7-irradiation to learn
all that, but it does sound magical indeed. I don't see that mm
mentioned his OS. Would that work for a volume that is Win98 too? (I
believe I've read a Win98 OS must begin within the first 8 GB of a hard
drive to boot, which may be a consideration.)

Should mm decide to do it that way -- it could be best for you to stick
around!


--
Thanks or Good Luck,
There may be humor in this post, and,
Naturally, you will not sue,
Should things get worse after this,
PCR
(e-mail address removed)

 

[Hot-Text]

You say:: read a Win98 OS must begin within the first 8 GB of a hard drive
to boot,
my have on one Computer at::
Root ( C: ) 524 MB, win98 (D 18.8 GB, and win2000 18.6 GB
so that makes 98 at the first 524 MB

on # 2 Computer I test the Win98 OS must begin within the first 8 GB and
start the Root at 10 GB
Give me today's a testing and we see if that right!

 

[mm]

[.......]
An Extended Partition is
itself actually a non-bootable Primary Partition which is a container
for multiple Logical Partitions....

Perhaps "non-booting" would be a better term than "non-bootable"
because an OS within a logical drive inside an Extended Partition
can be booted using the boot loader (e.g. ntldr for WinNT/2K/XP)
that can be in the Boot Sector of any one of the Primary Partitions.
IOW, in WinXP, one can have the MBR of the drive with the highest
boot priority (the "boot drive") pass control to the Primary Partition
marked "active" on that drive, and the boot.ini boot menu in that
active partition can point to an OS residing in ANY partition -
including a
logical drive within the Extended Partition - and boot load that OS.
I expect that the same flexibility exists for WinVista and Win7. The
restriction imposed on OSes residing on logical drives within Extended
Partitions is that their boot loader must be on one of the Primary
Partitions.

The implication of this is that an OS clone can reside anywhere in
the system - on any partition (Primary or Extended) and on any enabled
internal hard drive - and it can be booted to running status without
an intermediate "restoration" step needed for OS "images". I believe
this
also includes external eSATA hard drives if the motherboard has an
eSATA controller.

*TimDaniels*

I didn't want to risk the danger of XP/Vista/Win7-irradiation to learn
all that, but it does sound magical indeed. I don't see that mm
mentioned his OS.

I was only concerned about efficient ways to copy files. The question
of how to boot occurs to me at times, but my head starts to spin and I
have to lie down.

Would that work for a volume that is Win98 too? (I
believe I've read a Win98 OS must begin within the first 8 GB of a hard
drive to boot, which may be a consideration.)

Win98 definitely had more rules than XP, but when I lay down, they all
drained out of my head via my ears.

Should mm decide to do it that way -- it could be best for you to stick
around!

Currently no computer I have can boot from USB. I was a couple weeks
ago repairing an 18-month old netbook that could, and it was very
convenient, since it had no CD drive or floppy drive.

 

[PCR]

You say:: read a Win98 OS must begin within the first 8 GB of a hard
drive to boot,
my have on one Computer at::
Root ( C: ) 524 MB, win98 (D 18.8 GB, and win2000 18.6 GB
so that makes 98 at the first 524 MB

Are C: & D: on the same hard drive? Then that would prove there's a way
around the problem, if you can boot D:.

on # 2 Computer I test the Win98 OS must begin within the first 8 GB
and start the Root at 10 GB
Give me today's a testing and we see if that right!

All right. But don't take any big chances testing it just for me. I mean
that!

--
Thanks or Good Luck,
There may be humor in this post, and,
Naturally, you will not sue,
Should things get worse after this,
PCR
(e-mail address removed)

 

[Hot-Text]

Are C: & D: on the same hard drive? YES

 

[PCR]

:
[.......]
An Extended Partition is
itself actually a non-bootable Primary Partition which is a
container for multiple Logical Partitions....

Perhaps "non-booting" would be a better term than "non-bootable"
because an OS within a logical drive inside an Extended Partition
can be booted using the boot loader (e.g. ntldr for WinNT/2K/XP)
that can be in the Boot Sector of any one of the Primary Partitions.
IOW, in WinXP, one can have the MBR of the drive with the highest
boot priority (the "boot drive") pass control to the Primary
Partition marked "active" on that drive, and the boot.ini boot menu
in that active partition can point to an OS residing in ANY
partition - including a
logical drive within the Extended Partition - and boot load that OS.
I expect that the same flexibility exists for WinVista and Win7.
The restriction imposed on OSes residing on logical drives within
Extended Partitions is that their boot loader must be on one of the
Primary Partitions.

The implication of this is that an OS clone can reside anywhere
in the system - on any partition (Primary or Extended) and on any
enabled internal hard drive - and it can be booted to running
status without an intermediate "restoration" step needed for OS
"images". I believe this
also includes external eSATA hard drives if the motherboard has an
eSATA controller.

*TimDaniels*

I didn't want to risk the danger of XP/Vista/Win7-irradiation to learn
all that, but it does sound magical indeed. I don't see that mm
mentioned his OS.

I was only concerned about efficient ways to copy files. The question
of how to boot occurs to me at times, but my head starts to spin and I
have to lie down.

Something's gone wrong! The hard drive is supposed to spin -- not your
head!

Win98 definitely had more rules than XP, but when I lay down, they all
drained out of my head via my ears.

Uh-huh. Could be they changed the rules, & the NTLDR method may allow it
now. Hot-text is running a test. In the meantime, look under your cot to
see what's under there.

Currently no computer I have can boot from USB. I was a couple weeks
ago repairing an 18-month old netbook that could, and it was very
convenient, since it had no CD drive or floppy drive.

That would be convenient, then; yeah. So -- why do you want another slot
for a Primary Partition? I was presuming you wanted a partition that
would boot.


--
Thanks or Good Luck,
There may be humor in this post, and,
Naturally, you will not sue,
Should things get worse after this,
PCR
(e-mail address removed)

 

[PCR]

Are C: & D: on the same hard drive? YES

I see. OK. Now I'm thinking, the way they got around the problem was --
the NTLDR actually is booting the Root partition which is inside the 8
GB limit. Then the Win98 partition is somehow loaded/run from there,
even though it is much beyond the 8 GB barrier. That's probably it.
There's no real need to test it, Hot-Text. I don't want anything to go
wrong!


--
Thanks or Good Luck,
There may be humor in this post, and,
Naturally, you will not sue,
Should things get worse after this,
PCR
(e-mail address removed)

 

[mm]

Timothy Daniels wrote:
:
[.......]
An Extended Partition is
itself actually a non-bootable Primary Partition which is a
container for multiple Logical Partitions....

Perhaps "non-booting" would be a better term than "non-bootable"
because an OS within a logical drive inside an Extended Partition
can be booted using the boot loader (e.g. ntldr for WinNT/2K/XP)
that can be in the Boot Sector of any one of the Primary Partitions.
IOW, in WinXP, one can have the MBR of the drive with the highest
boot priority (the "boot drive") pass control to the Primary
Partition marked "active" on that drive, and the boot.ini boot menu
in that active partition can point to an OS residing in ANY
partition - including a
logical drive within the Extended Partition - and boot load that OS.
I expect that the same flexibility exists for WinVista and Win7.
The restriction imposed on OSes residing on logical drives within
Extended Partitions is that their boot loader must be on one of the
Primary Partitions.

The implication of this is that an OS clone can reside anywhere
in the system - on any partition (Primary or Extended) and on any
enabled internal hard drive - and it can be booted to running
status without an intermediate "restoration" step needed for OS
"images". I believe this
also includes external eSATA hard drives if the motherboard has an
eSATA controller.

*TimDaniels*

I didn't want to risk the danger of XP/Vista/Win7-irradiation to learn
all that, but it does sound magical indeed. I don't see that mm
mentioned his OS.

I was only concerned about efficient ways to copy files. The question
of how to boot occurs to me at times, but my head starts to spin and I
have to lie down.

Something's gone wrong! The hard drive is supposed to spin -- not your
head!

Win98 definitely had more rules than XP, but when I lay down, they all
drained out of my head via my ears.

Uh-huh. Could be they changed the rules, & the NTLDR method may allow it
now. Hot-text is running a test. In the meantime, look under your cot to
see what's under there.

Currently no computer I have can boot from USB. I was a couple weeks
ago repairing an 18-month old netbook that could, and it was very
convenient, since it had no CD drive or floppy drive.

That would be convenient, then; yeah. So -- why do you want another slot
for a Primary Partition? I was presuming you wanted a partition that
would boot.

No, I just wanted storage, for a disk-image iirc. This thread started
17 days ago, and I'm not sure anymore.

If I weren't planning to move to another computer with a new bigger
hdd, I might get a bigger HDD for this box, but when arranged right
I've got enough room for a few months if necessary.

Thanks

 

[Hot-Text]

LOOL it's a old PC with a 128 RAM
with a 30 GB 16 Head Hard Drive..
A Start PC the one 98 CD have all the Drive on; so I can get network and
put I Hardware drive before I move the Hard Drive.. to a newer PC

I see. OK. Now I'm thinking, the way they got around the problem was --
the NTLDR actually is booting the Root partition which is inside the 8
GB limit.

<<<<<<<< True >>>>>>>
But I can do Hidden FAT32 LBA 9 GB
Do a FAT32 10 GB for Root

That will put the ROOT pass 9 GB
A install 98 will put Windows pass 19 GB

I start on it at 1M 10/29/2010

Then the Win98 partition is somehow loaded/run from there,

 

[PCR]

LOOL it's a old PC with a 128 RAM
with a 30 GB 16 Head Hard Drive..
A Start PC the one 98 CD have all the Drive on; so I can get network
and put I Hardware drive before I move the Hard Drive.. to a newer PC

I see. Looks like you know what you're doing, then. OK. So long as it
isn't your main computer. Very good.

<<<<<<<< True >>>>>>>
But I can do Hidden FAT32 LBA 9 GB
Do a FAT32 10 GB for Root

That will put the ROOT pass 9 GB
A install 98 will put Windows pass 19 GB

So, that gets both the Root and the Win98 partition to start past the 8
GB point.

I start on it at 1M 10/29/2010

OK, let us know.

Then the Win98 partition is somehow loaded/run from there,

....snip

--
Thanks or Good Luck,
There may be humor in this post, and,
Naturally, you will not sue,
Should things get worse after this,
PCR
(e-mail address removed)

 

[PCR]

Timothy Daniels wrote:
:
[.......]
An Extended Partition is
itself actually a non-bootable Primary Partition which is a
container for multiple Logical Partitions....

Perhaps "non-booting" would be a better term than
"non-bootable" because an OS within a logical drive inside an
Extended Partition can be booted using the boot loader (e.g.
ntldr for WinNT/2K/XP) that can be in the Boot Sector of any one
of the Primary Partitions. IOW, in WinXP, one can have the MBR of
the drive with the highest boot priority (the "boot drive") pass
control to the Primary Partition marked "active" on that drive,
and the boot.ini boot menu in that active partition can point to
an OS residing in ANY partition - including a
logical drive within the Extended Partition - and boot load that
OS. I expect that the same flexibility exists for WinVista and
Win7. The restriction imposed on OSes residing on logical drives
within Extended Partitions is that their boot loader must be on
one of the Primary Partitions.

The implication of this is that an OS clone can reside
anywhere in the system - on any partition (Primary or Extended)
and on any enabled internal hard drive - and it can be booted to
running status without an intermediate "restoration" step needed
for OS "images". I believe this
also includes external eSATA hard drives if the motherboard has an
eSATA controller.

*TimDaniels*

I didn't want to risk the danger of XP/Vista/Win7-irradiation to
learn all that, but it does sound magical indeed. I don't see that
mm mentioned his OS.

I was only concerned about efficient ways to copy files. The
question of how to boot occurs to me at times, but my head starts
to spin and I have to lie down.

Something's gone wrong! The hard drive is supposed to spin -- not your
head!

Would that work for a volume that is Win98 too? (I
believe I've read a Win98 OS must begin within the first 8 GB of a
hard drive to boot, which may be a consideration.)

Win98 definitely had more rules than XP, but when I lay down, they
all drained out of my head via my ears.

Uh-huh. Could be they changed the rules, & the NTLDR method may allow
it now. Hot-text is running a test. In the meantime, look under your
cot to see what's under there.

Should mm decide to do it that way -- it could be best for you to
stick around!

Currently no computer I have can boot from USB. I was a couple
weeks ago repairing an 18-month old netbook that could, and it was
very convenient, since it had no CD drive or floppy drive.

That would be convenient, then; yeah. So -- why do you want another
slot for a Primary Partition? I was presuming you wanted a partition
that would boot.

No, I just wanted storage, for a disk-image iirc. This thread started
17 days ago, and I'm not sure anymore.

I'm not convinced you only wanted storage space or to know how to copy
80 GB fastest. If you stay in this thread -- you're going to have to
learn how to boot a new OS, whether it can be within an Extended
Partition, & whether it can start beyond 8 GB!

If I weren't planning to move to another computer with a new bigger
hdd, I might get a bigger HDD for this box, but when arranged right
I've got enough room for a few months if necessary.

All right. That reminds me I still need to get a new HDD for backup,
myself!

Thanks

You are welcome.

--
Thanks or Good Luck,
There may be humor in this post, and,
Naturally, you will not sue,
Should things get worse after this,
PCR
(e-mail address removed)

 

[FromTheRafters]

[...]

(I believe I've read a Win98 OS must begin within the first 8 GB of a hard
drive to boot, which may be a consideration.)

I never had 98 installed on a disk greater than 1.2 Gigs, and so never
encountered this problem.

Perhaps because the bootstrap has to locate and load io.sys *before* the
OS's filesystem subsystem is loaded? IOW io.sys must be reachable by the
bootstrap program. NT uses metadata so that the loader can be located in a
fault tolerant manner. If I'm not mistaken, this is all still16 bit real
mode code so addressing might be a problem for the larger drives.

Hopefully, Hot-Text will give us his results, and *someone* will understand
him and translate for the rest of us. )

 

[John John - MVP]

[...]

(I believe I've read a Win98 OS must begin within the first 8 GB of a
hard
drive to boot, which may be a consideration.)

I never had 98 installed on a disk greater than 1.2 Gigs, and so never
encountered this problem.

Perhaps because the bootstrap has to locate and load io.sys *before* the
OS's filesystem subsystem is loaded? IOW io.sys must be reachable by the
bootstrap program.

And what's reachable, at that point, is determined by whether the system
supports the BIOS disk service (LBA) extensions. Starting with 95-SR2
the MBR and boot sector code had the capability to boot beyond the 1024
cyl limit. If your BIOS did not support the extensions the code would
fall back to using CHS addressing.

It's the old INT 13 limitation, Windows 95 and Windows 98 utilize
extended INT 13 functions so they recognize disks larger than 8.4GB.
DOS 6.x and earlier versions do not support extended INT 13 functions so
they can't use these larger disks, not that it mattered too much as few
of the folks using these older DOS versions ever knew about this
limitation, during those days such large disk, if they did exist, would
have been priced out of reach of average computer users, they would have
been mostly used by large corporations, governments and data centers.
This limitation became better known and associated with NT4 as it was
the flagship business operating system when these larger drives became
more common and available to average computer users, but it too, like
the earlier DOS versions, did not support extended INT 13 functions so
it couldn't really boot on these larger disk while the consumer W9x
versions could.

John

 

[PCR]

On 10/29/2010 20:04, FromTheRafters wrote:

I don't see FromTheRafters in this thread! Why? Can it be he is
XP-irradiated? And Daniels too appears to have become invisible after
his first post!

[...]

(I believe I've read a Win98 OS must begin within the first 8 GB of
a hard drive to boot, which may be a consideration.)

I never had 98 installed on a disk greater than 1.2 Gigs, and so
never encountered this problem.

Me too.

And what's reachable, at that point, is determined by whether the
system supports the BIOS disk service (LBA) extensions. Starting with
95-SR2 the MBR and boot sector code had the capability to boot beyond
the 1024 cyl limit. If your BIOS did not support the extensions the
code would fall back to using CHS addressing.

That sounds like a reasonable explanation, that the BIOS may not have
the reach to load IO.sys. However, wouldn't IO.sys be kept in the XP
"boot" partition, which I think has to be the first partition on the
hard drive? (I don't really know.) If so, still it might be a problem --
if IO.sys also cannot reach beyond 8 GB. (But I don't know anything
about any of this. I wonder whether Daniels answered some of it but has
become invisible to me.)

I don't know what metadata is. But I'd wager IO.sys is 16-bit.

According to

http://homepage.ntlworld.com./jonathan.deboynepollard/FGA/os2-disc-and-volume-size-limits.html

<quote>
Windows NT 2000 was the first release of Windows NT to use the INT 13h
extensions throughout its boot process.

That looks like a very educative site, BUT it also says...

==quote==
DOS-Windows: DOS-Windows 95 OEM Service Release 2 was the first
operating system to use the INT 13h extensions in all parts of its boot
process.
==eoq===


--
Thanks or Good Luck,
There may be humor in this post, and,
Naturally, you will not sue,
Should things get worse after this,
PCR
(e-mail address removed)

 

[FromTheRafters]

I don't see FromTheRafters in this thread! Why? Can it be he is
XP-irradiated?

I'm using disappearing ink, you have to be quick and read fast. )

 

[PCR]

I'm using disappearing ink, you have to be quick and read fast. )

. OK, glad to hear it. I was fearing the worst.


--
Thanks or Good Luck,
There may be humor in this post, and,
Naturally, you will not sue,
Should things get worse after this,
PCR
(e-mail address removed)

 

[PCR]

On 10/29/2010 20:04, FromTheRafters wrote:

I don't see FromTheRafters in this thread! Why? Can it be he is
XP-irradiated? And Daniels too appears to have become invisible after
his first post!

[...]

(I believe I've read a Win98 OS must begin within the first 8 GB
of a hard drive to boot, which may be a consideration.)

I never had 98 installed on a disk greater than 1.2 Gigs, and so
never encountered this problem.

Me too.

Perhaps because the bootstrap has to locate and load io.sys
*before* the OS's filesystem subsystem is loaded? IOW io.sys must
be reachable by the bootstrap program.

And what's reachable, at that point, is determined by whether the
system supports the BIOS disk service (LBA) extensions. Starting
with 95-SR2 the MBR and boot sector code had the capability to boot
beyond the 1024 cyl limit. If your BIOS did not support the
extensions the code would fall back to using CHS addressing.

That sounds like a reasonable explanation, that the BIOS may not have
the reach to load IO.sys. However, wouldn't IO.sys be kept in the XP
"boot" partition, which I think has to be the first partition on the
hard drive? (I don't really know.) If so, still it might be a
problem -- if IO.sys also cannot reach beyond 8 GB. (But I don't
know anything about any of this. I wonder whether Daniels answered
some of it but has become invisible to me.)

NT/XP don't use IO.sys.

I know, but the question was whether or not a Win98 OS could boot when
its partition begins beyond the first 8 GB of a hard drive.

IO.sys follows the same rule. If 95SR2 or greater and the BIOS
supports int 0x13 extensions then it can reach beyond 8GB. Just as a
boot to a comparable DOS version would be able to access files in
that area. DOS *is* IO.sys (throw in a command shell for ease of use
.

All right. Then it does sound like it is a BIOS problem when Win98 won't
boot under that condition. Now I've done a search & found...

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/kb/article.php?id=189
Booting Win9x/ME from a Partition Above 8GB
===Quote=========
Win9x/ME, with the execption of Win95A, can be booted above 8GB. Win95A
must be installed to a FAT 16 partition that is located within the first
8GB of the hard drive.
===EOQ==========

So, I've likely been remembering the issue badly from the start. Thanks,
Blanton. You are knowledgeable as ever.



--
Thanks or Good Luck,
There may be humor in this post, and,
Naturally, you will not sue,
Should things get worse after this,
PCR
(e-mail address removed)