New hard drive scenario.

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.general (More info?)

"Paul Knudsen" <bigkahuna@jupada.com> wrote in message
news:saoqg1l4n0ti3i4v9nk9d5mggfa37u6si6@4ax.com...
> This may appear to be off-topic at first, but I believe Windows XP
> will need to be used in this scenario.
>
> My wife needs more storage space-something like 300gb or more. If
> possible, she wants to have a new, larger drive for her C: drive and
> to copy her present drive over to it. Sure, taking a backup and
> restoring it to a new EIDE drive would be simple enough, but I believe
> she'd like the performance of a SATA drive.
>
> Her computer does not support SATA natively, so she'd need a PCI
> controller card.
>
> Are they any "gotcha's" in this? Will SATA and EIDE drives work
> together in the same machine? How would XP Home be set up to boot
> from the new drive?
>

Your motherboard may not support booting from the SATA drive if a PATA drive
is hooked up to the motherboard controller. If it doesn't you'll be limited
to using the new drive as a secondary drive or remove the old drive.

Use a program like Acronis True Image or Norton Ghost to clone the old drive
to the new one. Most drives come with or you can download cloning software
from the manufacturer. In your case with a 3rd party card this free software
may not work. I'd give it a shot before buying TI or Ghost. After cloning
you may have to do a repair install of XP to load the drivers for the SATA
card and fix the boot.ini file. This can be done manually but it is
complicated. Most people find it easier to do the repair install.

If your motherboard doesn't support SATA it is not that recent. This may be
a good time to upgrade everything.

As always backup any important data before you start installing anything
new.

Kerry

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.general (More info?)

1) Is it neccessary to replace your C drive, why not install a second hd as
slave?
Saves a lot of trouble
Presumably you have a backup regime in place?

2) You probably would not notice any increased performance by using a SATA
interface
The hd is only a small part of system performance, as a whole and may be
limited by the rest of your hw

3) Sata and IDE can happilly coexist

4) Using a Sata drive as a boot drive requires you installing sata/raid
drivers from floppy during the o/s install process

"Paul Knudsen" <bigkahuna@jupada.com> wrote in message
news:saoqg1l4n0ti3i4v9nk9d5mggfa37u6si6@4ax.com...
> This may appear to be off-topic at first, but I believe Windows XP
> will need to be used in this scenario.
>
> My wife needs more storage space-something like 300gb or more. If
> possible, she wants to have a new, larger drive for her C: drive and
> to copy her present drive over to it. Sure, taking a backup and
> restoring it to a new EIDE drive would be simple enough, but I believe
> she'd like the performance of a SATA drive.
>
> Her computer does not support SATA natively, so she'd need a PCI
> controller card.
>
> Are they any "gotcha's" in this? Will SATA and EIDE drives work
> together in the same machine? How would XP Home be set up to boot
> from the new drive?
>
> --
> Top 10 Conservative Idiots:
> http://www.democraticunderground.com/top10/

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.general (More info?)

On Thu, 25 Aug 2005 09:38:41 +0100, "DL" <dl@spoofmail> wrote:

>1) Is it neccessary to replace your C drive, why not install a second hd as
>slave?
>Saves a lot of trouble

She has a second drive already, but just likes to keep everything on
C:! No hope for that! Thanks for the other info.
--
Top 10 Conservative Idiots:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/top10/

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.general (More info?)

On Thu, 25 Aug 2005 09:38:41 +0100, "DL" <dl@spoofmail> wrote:

>4) Using a Sata drive as a boot drive requires you installing sata/raid
>drivers from floppy during the o/s install process

Yes, but assumming the backup as already been restored to the new SATA
drive, what then? Repair Install?
--
Top 10 Conservative Idiots:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/top10/