HDrive install questions Help pls

[bonitah]

Hi,

I need help...I have installed a few hard drives but only as an additional storage drive....this time ideally what I would like to do is have the new drive (200gb Maxtor) contain winxp on a smaller partition say 10 gigs, and the rest of the new drive divided into 50gig-ish (<---new word LOL) partitions. Now to make things even more complicated I don't have the winxp install disc that came with the computer, it's in another city at my home. I am living temporarily somewhere else and have my computer with me. But, I do have access to a my son's winxp disc.

The harddrive I bought has the pata letters on it as opposed to the sata letters. What this means I have no idea...

My computer has a P4 - 2.93 ghz processor in it 512mb ram, winxp service pack 2 is installed, any other information I need to give you I can figure out with some instruction, I used to know more techy stuff re computers but of late I have not had the time or energy to do much educationally re the computer..lol.. The master harddrive is a WD800BB - Hard drive - 80 GB - internal - 3.5" - ATA-100 - 40 pin IDC - 7200 rpm - buffer: 2 MB Cache. Plus I have Western Digital Caviar WD400BB 40GB 7200 RPM 2MB Cache IDE Ultra ATA100 slave for storage...both drives are bulging..lol. I would like to keep the 80 gig as a slave for storage and I also would like to transfer the data from the 40gb drive to one of the other drives at some point.

How hard is this task? Any help is much appreciated, it is -30 degrees with a -40 wind chill, lol so I am not going anywhere and would like to get this job done...lol

thanks in advance soooooo much

bonitah

Oh yes I forgot this,

New Drive specs:

Drive Capacity 200GB
Internal or External Internal
Connectivity ATA/100
Rotation Speed 7200 RPM
Compatibility PC
Manufacturer Maxtor
Manufacturer Model L01V200
Cache Buffer Size 8MB
Data Transfer Rate ATA100
Average Seek Time 8.5ms

[l337_GuY]

You will need HDD cloning software to clone your windows XP to the new 200GB drive. Then using a partitioning tool, you can resize the windows XP partition to 10GB and create a new 50gig-ish partition.

[sparker]

Installing the hard drive is easy enough. Just connect the IDE cable to both the drive and motherboard being careful to align the pins properly and keeping in touch with the metal frame to avoid static damage to the motherboard. The power connection goes with the yellow wire to the outside. The drive can be set to master or single drive. When you reboot the drive it should automatically be detected by the bios. However, until the operating system is installed you will get an error message telling you there is no OS. You have a choice now as to whether you want to install windows and partition later or partition the drive now. I think XP does have some partitioning options on install but just for the operating system. The other choice is to get hold of something like "Partition Magic" and do all your partitioning work including preparation for an OS. This program will guide you through step by step. However, there are also many good free partition managers available. Hope this helps. By the way its 78F degrees here and has been raining for the past 4 days-lots of potholes and lots of flooding.

You won't need cloning if all you want to transfer is data. You can use a USB stick drive for that or burn the data to a CD or install the drive as a temporary slave and transfer data that way. XP is not easy to clone because of the different HAL. It would want re-activation. If it is just data you want burn it to a CD.

[l337_GuY]

With his XP disc in another place, He can't use his sons copy either, so cloning his current installation of XP on the HDD to the new HDD would be simple.

[sparker]

Yes 1337 Guy you're right, I misunderstood. A change in hard drive wouldn't change the activation anyway.

[bonitah]

Thanks for the responses...another question..

Maxtor has a program included with the HD called MaxBlaster 4 apparently you can use this prog to do exactly what I want, it will migrate all the data from one drive to the other...only problem is the new drive will not be partitioned, Can it still be partitioned after winxp is installed using a partitioning manager?

Any suggestions on good EASY-to-USE partitioning programs ?? free is always good EASY is the operative word here

thanks
bonita

oh ..Sparker ....I would gladly take the rain as well as the 78 degrees hehe... this morning it was -39 with a wind chill factor of -47... it's an ungodly .. country... lol

[l337_GuY]

Yup you can partition it with partitioning software. Most are pretty easy to use, Im not sure of any free ones though, I think partition magic 8 is (not sure).