Switching primary/secondary HDs

[Peter Chatterton]

I've got two PCs Ethernetted together in what I've been told this is a
client/server setup, altho it looks peer to peer to me. The server is
a newly bought used P3 1GHz with 2003 Server and a 40GB HD. The
client is a four year old 233MHz Celeron with XP SP2 and two HDs (10 &
20 GB). I'm going to be developing Excel VBA macros for the internet.
The only problem I have now is that I have to limit the size of the
spreadsheets. I am going to try upgrading the mother board to a used
P4, if I can get one -- retailers don't sell them here in Toronto.

I want the large drive on the client but with the old data; so I've
copied the data from the Celeron to the P4 and want to keep it there
when it's moved over.

I assume the only drive from the P4 will become a secondary on the
Celeron, but I'm wondering if this will be a problem -- will it lose
all its data in the install process? Apparently it used to be this
way, in DOS days.

Do I have to do anything weird to install these drives?

Just as a matter of interest, is it very difficult to restore data
after doing an FDISK? I worked for a two-bit consulting company that
"formatted" some systems from a hospital with lots of sensitive
patient data just by doing FDISKs; they were then sold. It seems to
me the data is still all there and shouldn't be too hard to access.

Thanks,
Peter.

 

[Rod Speed]

I've got two PCs Ethernetted together in what I've been told
this is a client/server setup, altho it looks peer to peer to me.
The server is a newly bought used P3 1GHz with 2003 Server
and a 40GB HD. The client is a four year old 233MHz Celeron
with XP SP2 and two HDs (10 & 20 GB). I'm going to be
developing Excel VBA macros for the internet. The only problem
I have now is that I have to limit the size of the spreadsheets.
I am going to try upgrading the mother board to a used P4,
if I can get one -- retailers don't sell them here in Toronto.

I want the large drive on the client but with the old data;
so I've copied the data from the Celeron to the P4 and
want to keep it there when it's moved over.

I assume the only drive from the P4 will become a
secondary on the Celeron, but I'm wondering if this will be
a problem -- will it lose all its data in the install process?

Nope. Not if you do it right.

Apparently it used to be this way, in DOS days.
Nope.

Do I have to do anything weird to install these drives?

Yeah, it does get a little tricky because
the OS is different on both systems.

It would be a lot simpler to get another 40GB
drive and replace the 10GB drive in the client.

It can still be done without doing that but gets a bit tricky
and dangerous unless you have a DVD burner as well.

If the 40GB drive is only half full, you could repartition
it to two partitions using a partition manager. Thats the
dangerous bit, you can lose all the data in the process
if the repartitioning fails.

Once you have two partitions, image the OS partition
on the 40GB drive to the second empty partition.

Then put it in the client system, in place of the non OS drive
on that system. Then image the client OS drive onto the
new partition on the 40GB drive. Then restore the image
of the 40GB drive to the drive that will go in the server.
Put that in the server and check that it boots up fine.

Then restore the image of the drive that came out of
the client to the first partition on the 40GB drive. Rejumper
that to be the boot drive in the client and boot from it.

Then delete the partition was used for the images
and expand the boot partition to fill the 40 GB drive.

It will get more messy than that if the two images
wont fit on the free space on the 40GB drive.

Just as a matter of interest, is it very difficult
to restore data after doing an FDISK?

Nope, and you dont use fdisk with XP and 2003 Server anyway.

I worked for a two-bit consulting company that "formatted"
some systems from a hospital with lots of sensitive patient
data just by doing FDISKs; they were then sold. It seems to
me the data is still all there and shouldn't be too hard to access.

Yeah, that's largely true.

 

[DaveW]

The "old" computer CANNOT run the newer technology 40 GB harddrive.

 

[Rod Speed]

The "old" computer CANNOT run the newer technology 40 GB harddrive.

Wrong. It can run it fine.