Replace harddrive that has 3 partitions

[NickySantoro]

My harddrive has three partitions, 6+ gig, 40+ gig, and 30+ gig. The
primary partition is the 6 and contains the OS (WinXP Pro) and is FAT
32. The second partition is also FAT 32. The third is NTFS. This is as
reported by various diagnostic tools I've found.
The primary is out of room. I have a spare 40 gig drive I'd like to
install as the primary drive and copy only the contents of the
original C over, not any other data or partitions.
Is there a way to do this without buying any more software I'm only
going to use once?

 

[big D]

From the way I read this there is no way to do this without third party
software.

Your best bet would be to use a product like Norton Ghost, and ghost your
6gb partition to the 40gb drive, which will make your PC boot off of the 40
gb.

FWIW, it might be alot easier to just install your spare 40 gb, and find
what is taking up all your room on your 6gb boot and move it over to the new
drive... much easier and wont req any software.

 

[kony]

My harddrive has three partitions, 6+ gig, 40+ gig, and 30+ gig. The
primary partition is the 6 and contains the OS (WinXP Pro) and is FAT
32. The second partition is also FAT 32. The third is NTFS. This is as
reported by various diagnostic tools I've found.
The primary is out of room. I have a spare 40 gig drive I'd like to
install as the primary drive and copy only the contents of the
original C over, not any other data or partitions.
Is there a way to do this without buying any more software I'm only
going to use once?

Have you tried the HDD manufacturer's setup program that
comes with (either brand? of drive) ? Some have the
capability to copy a partition from drive to drive,
providing that make of drive is in the system.

 

[Robert Heiling]

My harddrive has three partitions, 6+ gig, 40+ gig, and 30+ gig. The
primary partition is the 6 and contains the OS (WinXP Pro) and is FAT
32. The second partition is also FAT 32. The third is NTFS. This is as
reported by various diagnostic tools I've found.
The primary is out of room. I have a spare 40 gig drive I'd like to
install as the primary drive and copy only the contents of the
original C over, not any other data or partitions.
Is there a way to do this without buying any more software I'm only
going to use once?

I've been sitting here watching the conversations and have really been wondering
about something. Where did that NTFS partition come from? and why don't you have
an NTFS WinXP system partition? That 6 GB FAT32 partition sounds like the
Recovery Partition.

You didn't give any drive letters, but I'm wondering if the following is the
case.
C: NTFS - WinXP 30+ GB
D: FAT32 - WinXP Recovery 6+ GB
E: FAT32 - user data

Bob

 

[NickySantoro]

Have you tried the HDD manufacturer's setup program that
comes with (either brand? of drive) ? Some have the
capability to copy a partition from drive to drive,
providing that make of drive is in the system.

Thanks for the follow-up. One drive is a Seagate, that being the one
with multiple partitions. The other is a Maxtor. The way I read the
documentation for MaxBlast or the MigrateEasy software they both copy
the whole drive, partitions and all. Seemingly, the MigrateEasy will
copy to enlarge partitions on larger drives, but that will still leave
me short when going to a 40 gig drive. If I have to I'll pick up
another 80 gig Seagate, but I'd rather not buy more stuff. It's not
that I'm out of drive space, it's just that it's allocated wrong.

 

[Robert Heiling]

Thanks for the follow-up. I bought it on Ebay a couple of years ago.
It came set up this way. I added a slave (D), a burner (I), and
another drive (E) on a Maxtor(Promise) ATA card.
Current configuration.....
C FAT32 Boot drive Contains OS, Program files etc. same physical drive
as F and G
D FAT32 Slave drive to C
E FAT32 IDE drive on Maxtor(Promise)card
F FAT partition on same physical drive as C
G NTFS partition on same physical drive as C
H CDROM drive
I CDR/CDRW drive (burner) slave to H

D is 40 gig used for storage and is almost empty. My intent is to move
it's contents to E then copy just the contents of C partition to it,
change jumpers so it will be C, re jumper C so it become D, giving me
a nice fat boot drive not running out of space. The question is how do
I copy just the contents of the one partition and not copy the
partition size and the other partitions?

Just wanted to make sure we weren't missing something. That sure is one small
WinXP partition.

Bob

 

[NickySantoro]

I've been sitting here watching the conversations and have really been wondering
about something. Where did that NTFS partition come from? and why don't you have
an NTFS WinXP system partition? That 6 GB FAT32 partition sounds like the
Recovery Partition.

You didn't give any drive letters, but I'm wondering if the following is the
case.
C: NTFS - WinXP 30+ GB
D: FAT32 - WinXP Recovery 6+ GB
E: FAT32 - user data

Bob

Thanks for the follow-up. I bought it on Ebay a couple of years ago.
It came set up this way. I added a slave (D), a burner (I), and
another drive (E) on a Maxtor(Promise) ATA card.
Current configuration.....
C FAT32 Boot drive Contains OS, Program files etc. same physical drive
as F and G
D FAT32 Slave drive to C
E FAT32 IDE drive on Maxtor(Promise)card
F FAT partition on same physical drive as C
G NTFS partition on same physical drive as C
H CDROM drive
I CDR/CDRW drive (burner) slave to H

D is 40 gig used for storage and is almost empty. My intent is to move
it's contents to E then copy just the contents of C partition to it,
change jumpers so it will be C, re jumper C so it become D, giving me
a nice fat boot drive not running out of space. The question is how do
I copy just the contents of the one partition and not copy the
partition size and the other partitions?

 

[kony]

Thanks for the follow-up. One drive is a Seagate, that being the one
with multiple partitions. The other is a Maxtor. The way I read the
documentation for MaxBlast or the MigrateEasy software they both copy
the whole drive, partitions and all. Seemingly, the MigrateEasy will
copy to enlarge partitions on larger drives, but that will still leave
me short when going to a 40 gig drive. If I have to I'll pick up
another 80 gig Seagate, but I'd rather not buy more stuff. It's not
that I'm out of drive space, it's just that it's allocated wrong.

You might see if this will do what you need,
http://www.runtime.org/dixml.htm

It claims to image to same size or larger partition.

 

[NickySantoro]

On Tue, 03 Apr 2007 12:51:21 -0500, NickySantoro

Many thanks to all who responded. After evaluating all my
alternatives, I think my best option is to just bite the bullet and
reinstall XP on a new HD. The one I was going to use is a Maxtor but
since I've had a couple of those quit over the years, I am reluctant
to use it as a boot drive.
Is Seagate still the leader in reliability/durability? I know they
merged with Maxtor which bodes ill. Is there any Seagate that is
better than the others in terms of durability? All factors such as
speed, noise, etc are secondary to reliability. The 80 gig drives seem
ubiquitous and priced well, FWIW.
Any guidance in this area would be most appreciated.

 

[jaster]

On Tue, 03 Apr 2007 12:51:21 -0500, NickySantoro

Many thanks to all who responded. After evaluating all my alternatives, I
think my best option is to just bite the bullet and reinstall XP on a new
HD. The one I was going to use is a Maxtor but since I've had a couple of
those quit over the years, I am reluctant to use it as a boot drive.
Is Seagate still the leader in reliability/durability? I know they merged
with Maxtor which bodes ill. Is there any Seagate that is better than the
others in terms of durability? All factors such as speed, noise, etc are
secondary to reliability. The 80 gig drives seem ubiquitous and priced
well, FWIW.
Any guidance in this area would be most appreciated.

I think your approach best after all you're only working with 6g on C:\
Expansion comes from M$ defect loading of program files to c:\windows\
and c:\program files\

I share your skeptism of Maxtor but smaller drives perform a little better
than larger drives. I'm not sure about the difference between 40g and 80g
but in actual performance a 40g can be as fast or faster than larger
drives. Make backups regularly.

 

[NickySantoro]

I think your approach best after all you're only working with 6g on C:\
Expansion comes from M$ defect loading of program files to c:\windows\
and c:\program files\

I share your skeptism of Maxtor but smaller drives perform a little better
than larger drives. I'm not sure about the difference between 40g and 80g
but in actual performance a 40g can be as fast or faster than larger
drives. Make backups regularly.

Many thanks for the follow-up. Since a smaller drive such as a 40 gig
seems to be the "weapon of choice" , do you have a preference between
brands/models as in my case, performance is not the penultimate
criterion while reliability is ? Any guidance would be most
appreciated.

 

[kony]

On Tue, 03 Apr 2007 12:51:21 -0500, NickySantoro

Many thanks to all who responded. After evaluating all my
alternatives, I think my best option is to just bite the bullet and
reinstall XP on a new HD. The one I was going to use is a Maxtor but
since I've had a couple of those quit over the years, I am reluctant
to use it as a boot drive.

"Over the years"? There is no drive that won't fail if you
use it (Until it fails). Be very cautious about trusting
those who quickly point out every Maxtor failure as evidence
of a problem, but then don't take the same attitude about
any other drive make failing. Some of us have no horror
stores about Maxtor with quite a few drives working fine. j
Even so, it is also not a reason to try to push the brand,
when there are others at similar prices.

Is Seagate still the leader in reliability/durability? I know they
merged with Maxtor which bodes ill.

Not at all "ill", you can even buy current generation
"Maxtor" packaged drives that are Seagate made now... which
makes it a bit funny when some quickly bash Maxtor products
and suggest buying a Seagate, _today_.

Is there any Seagate that is
better than the others in terms of durability? All factors such as
speed, noise, etc are secondary to reliability. The 80 gig drives seem
ubiquitous and priced well, FWIW.
Any guidance in this area would be most appreciated.

The key is not to consider any of them particularly durable,
nor particularly fragile. Selection, implementation is not
changed by brand. If the data is important you want an
easily restorable backup. That is far more important than
which drive you select. If realtime data availability is
important too, use RAID (not raid 0 of course).

You could buy a Seagate tomorrow and have it fail in a
month's time. Odds are against it but there are no
guarantees against this, only that the drive will be
replaced under warranty. If there is one thing we can be
sure of, it is that if/when any past generation drive has
shown to be problematic enough that we can look back in
retrospect and make a fair claim it was bad, to be avoided,
the manufacturer has also noticed at that point and has made
corrections to the (then) contemporary replacement in their
product line.

 

[NickySantoro]

"Over the years"? There is no drive that won't fail if you
use it (Until it fails). Be very cautious about trusting
those who quickly point out every Maxtor failure as evidence
of a problem, but then don't take the same attitude about
any other drive make failing. Some of us have no horror
stores about Maxtor with quite a few drives working fine. j
Even so, it is also not a reason to try to push the brand,
when there are others at similar prices.




Not at all "ill", you can even buy current generation
"Maxtor" packaged drives that are Seagate made now... which
makes it a bit funny when some quickly bash Maxtor products
and suggest buying a Seagate, _today_.



The key is not to consider any of them particularly durable,
nor particularly fragile. Selection, implementation is not
changed by brand. If the data is important you want an
easily restorable backup. That is far more important than
which drive you select. If realtime data availability is
important too, use RAID (not raid 0 of course).

You could buy a Seagate tomorrow and have it fail in a
month's time. Odds are against it but there are no
guarantees against this, only that the drive will be
replaced under warranty. If there is one thing we can be
sure of, it is that if/when any past generation drive has
shown to be problematic enough that we can look back in
retrospect and make a fair claim it was bad, to be avoided,
the manufacturer has also noticed at that point and has made
corrections to the (then) contemporary replacement in their
product line.

I seem to have offended you by criticizing Maxtor based upon my past
experience. I apologize and will not trouble you further. Thank you
for your assistance and input.

 

[kony]

I seem to have offended you by criticizing Maxtor based upon my past
experience. I apologize and will not trouble you further. Thank you
for your assistance and input.

I'm just opposed to urban myths, like the one that Maxtor's
entire product line is to be avoided in general. There are
specific drives that have their own unique issues, including
a few Seagates, a few Maxtors, etc. Beyond that, having
some drive fail is just the luck of the draw, the failure
rate on HDDs is higher than many other products in their
first year, almost anything that didn't arrive DOA.

 

[jaster]

Many thanks for the follow-up. Since a smaller drive such as a 40 gig
seems to be the "weapon of choice" , do you have a preference between
brands/models as in my case, performance is not the penultimate criterion
while reliability is ? Any guidance would be most appreciated.

Since I've had a Seagate fail, in principle I agree with kony but my
dislike of Maxtor was due to poor support, jumper config and
documentation. That said, use price, noise level, warranty and support for
comparison.

I have 0 problems with Seagate support, warranty, and they honor
rebates. Hitachi's are supposed to be the quieter drives but WD, IBM,
Maxtor and Fujitsu all make decent drives.