Getting New HD seen as system Drive & partition for OS protection

[superlumeny]

I am going to install a new Maxline III (Maxtor) enterprise SATA-II HD in a Compaq..I have a 5ooGB drive I'm using for storage and an old Maxtor 20GB drive that is now the system HD that I want to dis-engage....HOW DO I get the new HD recognized as the SYSTEM ( BOOT) HD...????..the 500GB HD and the new Maxline boot from a...Promise SATA300-TX4302 Controller Card.....ALSO....Does putting the OS (XP Pro) in a partition by it's self protect it from contamination (viruses,etc) fron other partitions on the same drive...???...

[LeftyAce]

To get the new drive to act as the system drive, you'll need to clone the old drive onto it. Either the new drive will come with software, or I believe the Ultimate Boot CD has cloning software.

You may have driver issues switching the system drive onto a controller card. If so, you would probably do better to do a fresh windows install on the new drive, and copy any files you need off of the 20GB.


Putting the OS on its own partition just allows you to wipe it and reinstall without losing any of your personal data. In the event of a virus infection, this can save some time. It won't prevent the OS from getting infected in the first place though.

[TwoRails]

Hi superlumeny,

Welcome to PC Mechanic !!

Originally Posted by superlumeny ....HOW DO I get the new HD recognized as the SYSTEM ( BOOT) HD...????...

use the utility CD that came with the new drive which will have a cloning function/utility on it. Clone the drive and swap it out with the original. There should be detailed instructions with the disk, if not it is just as simple as cloning and removing the old drive, replacing it with the new drive, and reboot.

..the 500GB HD and the new Maxline boot from a...Promise SATA300-TX4302 Controller Card...

you cannot boot from the controller card, so your new drive will be in the same physical location as your 20 GB drive. I wouldn't see any advantage of booting from the controller card, anyway, as you have a performance penalty hit going to the PCI bus and the card itself. For best performance boot right from the IDE controller on the motherboard.

Since you're running two drives now, why not just use to new drive for the OS, as it seems you're intending, and keep the 500 GB drive for storage right where it is? That way you would not need a controller card and you would have a spare 20 GB drive to use as an external unit.

...Does putting the OS (XP Pro) in a partition by it's self protect it from contamination (viruses,etc) fron other partitions on the same drive...???...

yes, it can definitely help. I have lost a lot of logical drives without the other drives being affected on the physical unit.

HTH

TwoRails

[superlumeny]

Thank you all for your responses...TO CLARIFY...the new drive being a SATA-II.. must boot ...off the Controller card...the question boils down to...will cloning the SATA-II from the 20GB IDE work to get it recognized as the system (boot) drive...or should I just get a new IDE drive that the CMOS will recognize...????...the CMOS only sees the Controller Card in the.. ADVANCED..boot-order CMOS....as for keeping the old drive...I am not sure there is much spin left on the old IDE drive...it clatters when it seeks...none of my other Maxtor drives ever made this much noise....I am afraid I will just get it..all SET..and then it will die....

[Cricket]

If the new boot drive is going to be on the controller card, what is the first boot device in the BIOS? For older computers making a SCSI device the first boot device would often let the hard drive on a adapter card be the boot drive.

Cricket

[TwoRails]

Originally Posted by superlumeny Thank you all for your responses...TO CLARIFY...the new drive being a SATA-II.. must boot ...off the Controller card...the question boils down to...will cloning the SATA-II from the 20GB IDE work to get it recognized as the system (boot) drive...or should I just get a new IDE drive that the CMOS will recognize...????...the CMOS only sees the Controller Card in the.. ADVANCED..boot-order CMOS....as for keeping the old drive...I am not sure there is much spin left on the old IDE drive...it clatters when it seeks...none of my other Maxtor drives ever made this much noise....I am afraid I will just get it..all SET..and then it will die....

Personally I would get an IDE drive and boot from it off the motherboard. I don't like going through add-on cards to boot; something about it doesn't sit right with me.

Your motherboard has to support booting off the controller card or it just won't work. The specific drive has to be seen as bootable from inside the bios. If you can't get it to show, then it won't boot.

Agreed; Maxtor drives are normally very quiet drives. If it's making a noise, I would replace it, too.