I'm afraid I know just enough to get myself in trouble, so I am gathering info before I install a new HD.

I have a  20Gb hardrive that has about 600M free space left and is getting very slow.  I have purchased a 120Gb Maxtor drive ($25 after rebate, which is a good deal I think.   Even though I later came across forum posts somewhere that said avoid Maxtor at all costs.)
I have a CD drive (drive D:) and a CD writer (drive E:).

I have a DVD drive I want to replace the CD-drive with, so that will become D: (I already have installed software that expects to find the cd in drive D and would rather not re-install unless I have to.)

I intend to set up the second HD as all extended, haven't settled on how many partitions yet.  I will then move some of the stuff from the primary drive to the secondary, remove what I don't need anymore, and defrag the primary drive.

So my questions are:

1. Physical location of new drive:

I currently have the 20G HD on IDE1 and the CD drives as master and slave on IDE2 (I believe the cd writer docs suggested not installing it on same channel as the HD for performance reasons)

The new HD docs give an example of  both HDs on IDE1 and both optical drives on IDE2.  However I have seen suggestions for having the HDs on separate IDE channels.  What is your take on this?

2. Partitioning and formatting the 120G HD:

With all this extra room I would like to have a partition for playing with Linux.  However I have seen some info that implies I have to have the Linux install process partition the drive instead of FDISK.   Which brings up another matter.  The HD install docs recommend using their disk setup from their CD instead of FDISK. 

So, if I use either FDISK or the MAXTOR MaxBlast  to partition and format the drive, then am I then not able to have a partition set apart to install Linux?

I'm considering setting aside a partition for Ghost images of the primary (20G) HD.  I have Ghost 2002.  The earliest version mentioned in the guide is 2003.  Is 2002 sufficient? 

For a 20 GB HD do I would need a slightly larger partition to save the image to, how much bigger would it need to be?

I would like any other suggestions regarding number and size I should make the remaining  partitions, as well as any comments on the Linux issue.  (I do realize it partly depends on what  I want to do).  I don't know if I want to attempt repartitioning the primary HD at this point anyway.  I do not have Partition Magic and can't afford to purchase it at this time.

brian4xp wrote on Apr 20^th, 2006 at 10:19pm:

Before Hurricane Katrina altered my lifestyle, I had four desktop PCs in a LAN under my roof and several more scattered across the southeastern USA that I set up for friends and family.  All of these PCs had internal IDE SLAVE HDDs in addition to MASTER HDDs that were mostly IDE, and I had five external enclosure kits with IDE HDDs.  As far as brands went, there were Maxtor, Seagate, Western Digital and a single Hitachi.  The only complaint I have against Maxtor HDDs is that they do not stand up well after extended immersion in hurricane floodwaters , i.e., over the years - starting in 1983 when I was issued my first government PC - I have found Maxtors to be every bit as reliable as their counterparts.

El_Pescador wrote on Apr 21^st, 2006 at 8:35am:


Thanks.  I guess, as with many things, your mileage may vary.

brian4xp,

While waiting for someone to explain how to clone with Ghost 2002, have a look at this.

http://radified.com/cgi-bin/YaBB/YaBB.cgi?board=general;action=display;num=11175...

The part about removing the old HD for the first boot of the new HD applies to all cloning. Then you can reattach the old HD.

I have no experience with GoBack.

In the Guide for Partitioning it mentions having an OS partition.  What all do you recommend putting in that partition besides the OS.  Frequently used programs only?  And data is to be saved in a separate partition?  Did I understand that correctly?

Brian wrote on Apr 21^st, 2006 at 4:06pm:


I forgot to remove the old HD for the first boot.  I just switched the two.  I skimmed through the 7 pages and it seemed to be more of an issue for WinXP to have both drives there on the first boot.  I have 98SE. 

I have had some issues with shortcuts pointing to the wrong place since, related to the new drive letters (where I once had only drive C I now have D,E,F,G,H and have moved some data --My Documents, Email store, etc-- off of C:) but only once did I have to change a registry value to resolve it.  Mostly I just had to do a 'Properties' and change the drive letter.

I did have some problems with the switchover:

1.  One of the power pins on the old HD broke when I removed the connecter.  I stuck it back into the hole in the HD, stuck the connector on, prayed, and booted up.  It came up fine and has been working fine ever since, but I don't have much confidence in it now.  I hesitate to open the HD case to see if I can solder it myself.  Any idea on feasibility and cost of taking it somewhere to be repaired?

2.  My original plan was to:
    a.  Image HD 1 to a partition on HD 2.
    b.  Restore image to primary partition on HD 2.
    c.  Switch drives and boot off HD 2

   Should this have worked?  (it didn't, for reasons I will explain in a minute).  Does imaging a primary boot partition image the MBR,  so that restoring that image to another drive then makes that drive an identical, bootable drive?

3.  I never did get the initial imaging to work.  After the first 2Gb it asked me for a filename.  It then would accept neither an <ENTER> nor a filename.  At one point it told me the drive was full, which after I aborted and checked it found it was not.  I think this was just something I was overlooking, even though I tried checking the 'auto-name' and also with it not checked.  I will study the documentation and Guide more thoroughly and try it again when I get a chance.   What I finally did, since I didn't have time to fool with it at the time, was use the MaxBlast software to copy the data from one HD to the other.

The data is already copied.  I just need to decide what to do with the old drive now.  It sounds like it would cost more than it is worth to try to get the old drive fixed.