Storage HD concerns

[lokifalcon]

Running out of space. I have a 150 WD Raptor and a 320 Seagate. Raptor was primary HD when first built, I later purchased Seagate when I saw it on sale and has never been installed. I have just wiped that HD clean with DriveScrubber,long story. I had the Seagate laying around and thought the extra storage is needed. Is all I need to do is connect both sata cables to the Asus P5N32-SLI Premium MB. Select Raptor as boot device? My son installed OS Windows xp on Seagate but I would like to move it to Raptor and use it for OS and games while the Seagate stores photos and music, etc. Can it be transfered to raptor or should I uninstall it on Seagate and reinstall to Raptor? Any ideas and advice would be much appreciated.

[Dave21]

I do not believe that windows file is transferrable between harddrives so you would have to wipe the seagate and install the OS on the raptor. Set the raptor as your primary drive and the seagate as the secondary slave.

[glc]

I'm not exactly clear on the situation. Please be very specific where each drive is now and what each contains. Also, are we talking about the same computer (you - son) or are there 2 different computers involved?

Dave, you are not correct. People upgrade their hard drives all the time by cloning.

[Dave21]

Dave, you are not correct. People upgrade their hard drives all the time by cloning.Thanks, i guess you learn something everyday. I always assume that it was not possible.

I think he is referring to cloning his OS from the seagate drive to the raptor drive.

[glc]

If that's what he wants to do, it's very easily done with cloning software as long as there is sufficient space on that smaller drive, cloning will copy the ENTIRE drive and WIPE the target drive first. HOWEVER, if Windows was installed on the Seagate in a DIFFERENT computer, that's another story.

[edfair]

From the post I would assume that the existing 150 drive has some earlier OS installed and a desire to have XP on it and the 320 as additional storage.

He could migrate the XP (assumption that it was installed with the 320 in the current system) but all the programs and data on the existing 150 would be wiped out and would need to be reloaded.

Sounds to me like the better way would be to install the 320 as slave to whatever system is current, do data backup to it, install XP and the programs on the 150, then restore the data from the 320.

Then do whatever is needed to get the 320 more functional with XP.

[lokifalcon]

There is only one PC. The Raptor got alot of negative things on it and I decided to wipe it and start fresh, like I said long story. I had the Seagate lying around never used, planned to add it to PC when needed more space. My son couldn't wait to use the internet, I'm sure it was an emergency. And decided to install OS on Seagate, which he is quite capable. I just want to return PC to my idea of running OS and games on raptor and use Seagate as storage, my son has lots of music, photo and art stuff. I want to know if it is possible to transfer Windows xp to the Raptor without it being more trouble than uninstalling and reinstalling. And if I have to uninstall from Seagate do I have to wipe it clean? Thanks

[glc]

If the Seagate has less than 100gb of stuff on it, clone it to the Raptor. You can use Seagate DiscWizard or WD Data Lifeguard to do it. Build a boot CD and do it that way, don't do it in Windows. Then the Seagate can be reformatted for storage.

[lokifalcon]

I downloaded the Seagate Disc Wizard and cloned it to the WD Raptor. I disconnected the Seagate to see how the Raptor reacted by itself, and I am writing this post now with it. The Disc Wizard ran very smoothly, thank you. And by the way, I noticed that the Raptor appears faster in rebooting and running things. Maybe not a big difference but noticable. Thanks again! Saved alot of time.