Using 2nd internal hard drive

[pj28af]

Hello, I recently installed a 2nd , larger capacity hard drive. It is recognize and ready to use. Is ther a way to make it my primary HD so that at contains and receives all data? Right now, irt is sitting empty, and my original HD still does all the work. I run WXP

 

[John_VanKirk]

Hello, and welcome to Tom's Hardware.

Please give us more information about your computer, make, model #, OS=Win-XP, primary HDD (make, model #, size, Sata I-II or PATA), and your new HDD (make, model #, Sata or PATA, size).
Also when you go to Disk Management, do you see your new HDD listed there as Disk 1, Online, with an assigned Drive letter and NTFS file system, or is it Not Initialized, and the Volume Status as Unallocated?

That way we can give your the best way of setting it up.

 

[Cerealkiller45_86]

u can use a cloning software to move your original to the new HD.
Acronis True Image or use the Free Easeus To Do Backup
http://www.todo-backup.com/

 

[pj28af]

Hello, and welcome to Tom's Hardware.

Please give us more information about your computer, make, model #, OS=Win-XP, primary HDD (make, model #, size, Sata I-II or PATA), and your new HDD (make, model #, Sata or PATA, size).
Also when you go to Disk Management, do you see your new HDD listed there as Disk 1, Online, with an assigned Drive letter and NTFS file system, or is it Not Initialized, and the Volume Status as Unallocated?

That way we can give your the best way of setting it up.

______________________________________________________________________

Here's the data I have:
Dell Dimension E/310; DV051, with Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005, Service Pack 3.
Original HDD (Disk O) ,SATA, showing 80GB in C & D
New HDD (Disk 1), SATA, showing 17.76GB in J; and 341.80GB active with 106.20GB unallotted in K. The new HDD was purchased as 500GB.

I would love to get everything into the new HDD with the old HDD as backup. How do I make J/K as C and C/D as backup (J?).

Thanks for any help.

 

[John_VanKirk]

______________________________________________________________________

Here's the data I have:
Dell Dimension E/310; DV051, with Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005, Service Pack 3.
Original HDD (Disk O) ,SATA, showing 80GB in C & D
New HDD (Disk 1), SATA, showing 17.76GB in J; and 341.80GB active with 106.20GB unallotted in K. The new HDD was purchased as 500GB.

I would love to get everything into the new HDD with the old HDD as backup. How do I make J/K as C and C/D as backup (J?).

Thanks for any help.

OK, there are a couple more questions to organize all the pieces. On the Dell old HDD, they usually place a restore partition at the end of the drive if ever needed for recovery. Is that present? Can look in Disk Management at it will show up in the graphical lower area in the Disk 0 Row. The Dell HDD could just be a 160GB drive divided into two partitions, but would be unusual.

Other thing is how did the new HDD get partitioned, and what is the 17.76 GB small partition up front for? Finally do you want to have the new HDD have about equal partitions as the older drive?

 

[pj28af]

Thanks for the response.

I right-clicked MY COMPUTER, then left-clicked MANAGE, then opened Disk Management. There are no words for restore partition that I could find. Did I open the right thing, or do I need to check at F2/F12 after restart?

The original HDD is 80GB, partitioned as I showed before. On the new HDD, I did the partion; I thought that was right. Yes, I want the same proportion as on the old HDD.

Again, thanks for your help and patience.

pj28af

 

[pj28af]

I have not yet received a complete answer to my original question and my
follow-on responses to the queries for more information. I have answered
those with the best information I could provide. I am still hoping that
someone will give me a solution.

pj28af

 

[John_VanKirk]

I have not yet received a complete answer to my original question and my
follow-on responses to the queries for more information. I have answered
those with the best information I could provide. I am still hoping that
someone will give me a solution.

pj28af

Hi there,

We need to know what is on your Disk0 drive, partitioned as C and D. The total size is 80 GB. I assume C: is the boot, system partition. What is the size and what's on the D: Partition? Also please check in Disk Management again, looking at the Disk 0. Is there another partition shown there without a DriveLetter? So as an example C: = 40GB??, D: = 30GB??, Unlettered Partition = 10GB?? I would be very surprised if Dell did not place a reserved restore partition either at the beginning or at the end of the drive, for a clean just out of the box installation.

What you want to do is to 'clone' your Disk 0 over to Disk 1

That can be done in several different ways. One would be to Clone the whole source drive over to the new destination drive.
You can choose bit for bit, so that the new drive has the C: and D: Exactly as on the old drive, so 80 GB will be used. The rest is Unallocated at the end.
Or you can choose to Clone it proportionally, so that whatever the ratio of C: and D: are now (say 50:50) the new drive partitions would be the same (50:50 - which would be 250GB and 250GB). Probably what your're asking about.

There are several choices of applications to do that:
As mentioned earlier, you can use the commercial Acronis True Image application, presently $29, in which you have several choices (highly recommended), You can use the Easeus ToDo Back application Free edition, and use the Disk Clone applet, or if one of your HDD's is a Western Digital, you can use the Free Acronis True Image Western Digital Edition to clone your drive.

Here is the link to the Easeus website to review their software and the Acronis website also.
www.easeus.com/disk-copy
http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage

Hope that's helpful!

 

[pj28af]

Thanks for your quick and thorough response.

Per your request, here's what's on Disk 0: C: 51.21GB NTFS; D: 18.60GB NTFS; Unlettered: 39MB FAT EISA config; Unlettered: 4.64GB FAT 32.

I downloaded EASEUS ToDo Backup Free 2.5.1; it appears fairly easy to use. However, when I try to clone from the old Disk (C/D) to the new bigger disk, I'm cautioned that I will lose anything already on the new Disk. Since I began sending stuff there, I don't want it deleted. What can I do to load everything on the newDisk, make it the active one, and "close down the old Disk?

Thanks for your help and pationce.

pj28af

 

[John_VanKirk]

Thanks for your quick and thorough response.

Per your request, here's what's on Disk 0: C: 51.21GB NTFS; D: 18.60GB NTFS; Unlettered: 39MB FAT EISA config; Unlettered: 4.64GB FAT 32.

I downloaded EASEUS ToDo Backup Free 2.5.1; it appears fairly easy to use. However, when I try to clone from the old Disk (C/D) to the new bigger disk, I'm cautioned that I will lose anything already on the new Disk. Since I began sending stuff there, I don't want it deleted. What can I do to load everything on the newDisk, make it the active one, and "close down the old Disk?

Thanks for your help and pationce.

pj28af

Hello,

OK, now we're making progress. You see on Disk 0 there are actually 4 partitions, the 39 MB & 4.64 GB unlettered partition which is the resore data for this Dell computer. Need to clone all over to the new HDD.

When you clone data from 1 drive to another drive, everything gets copied bit by bit. So anything on the new HDD will be lost.
What you need to do first, is move all data you want from the new drive back to your old drive. (It's going to be cloned back to the new drive in the next process)
Now use Easeus to Clone your whole Disk 0 drive to your new drive. Use the proportional choice so everything is cloned & it makes each partition bigger by the same proportion.
It will clone over to the new drive, the present C partition, D partition, 39Mb partition, & unlettered 4.64 GB partition. It won't delete the data on your present 'old drive'.

When all done, then remove your old drive and place the new drive on it's SATA connector so it will be the boot drive.
Then boot up and it should all work for you. Only when you KNOW and have checked everything out and everythings works as expected, would you reformat the 'old drive' for backup use.

 

[pj28af]

Well, I understand the cloning part -- and I'm ready. I just don't know how to move data back to the old disk from the new one. It must be simple; I simply can't find the right tool/program.

Please help -- again. Thank you so much

pj28af

 

[John_VanKirk]

Well, I understand the cloning part -- and I'm ready. I just don't know how to move data back to the old disk from the new one. It must be simple; I simply can't find the right tool/program.

Please help -- again. Thank you so much

pj28af

Depends how much data is on the new drive, but just select a main folder, and drag and drop it back to the old drive. You may have to change the folder name if there's one with the same name already on the old drive. When you drag and drop from one drive to another, is realy is a copy. So once it's back on the old drive, you can delete it from the new drive (not absolutely necessary because it gets cloned over anyway)
It's really pretty easy, then you should be ready to go.

 

[pj28af]

Please accept my grateful thanks. I dragged and dropped from the new to the old; I cloned proportionally from the old to the new; and now I'll take a day or two to ensure everything is ok (it seems fine right away). Do I then make the old disk inactive? Will reformatting erase everything from the old disk? That is my final desire since my system can only handle 500 GB and that's the size of the new (system/boot) disk.

Again, thank you for your help and patience.

pj28af

 

[John_VanKirk]

Please accept my grateful thanks. I dragged and dropped from the new to the old; I cloned proportionally from the old to the new; and now I'll take a day or two to ensure everything is ok (it seems fine right away). Do I then make the old disk inactive? Will reformatting erase everything from the old disk? That is my final desire since my system can only handle 500 GB and that's the size of the new (system/boot) disk.

Again, thank you for your help and patience.

pj28af

You are very welcome!
When all is woking OK, attach the 'old' drive and right click on the Volume Status, the choose 'Delete Volume'. That will remove the partition table so it will all be unallocated. Then you can partition it and NTFS format it as desired later.

Always be safe. If you are not going to do anything to this drive right away, just leave the old data on it until you decide to re-use the drive. That way if anything happens to your new setup, you have this as a backup.