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Geek Culture / Another Hard Drive question

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Agent Dink
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Posted: 23rd Feb 2007 04:44 Edited at: 23rd Feb 2007 04:45
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Well, I bought a SATA hard drive, and now I have to install it. No big deal. I just was curious if I could install it as secondary master for now, install Windows on it, convert all my files over, then switch my hard drives so my IDE is Secondary and my SATA is Primary, then advance to erasing the IDE and blah blah blah. Would the SATA drive convert to primary and work without any issues? I was just looking to do the changeover as quickly and painlessly as possible so I didn't have to go without my computer in an unusable state for too long. I would be able to do this in my liesure this way, and the day I choose to switch the drives, I will be about back to normal.

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indi
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Posted: 23rd Feb 2007 07:46
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im guessing the other drive is IDE or EIDE.
I.I.W.Y. I would firstly back up all data to DVD-RW or DVD-R for a safety measure.
This guarantees any data loss if your new to this kind of thing.

Remove the E / IDE drive from your machine and allow windows CD to partition and install the operating system on the SATA. this also prevents any formatting of the drive with the original data if your not sure.

Usually port 0 is good as primary from your bios for your sata
Once your OS is running on the faster drive anyway, the whole system will behave better.

Your IDE drive will suffice as a temp drive back up space once you start using SATA as your primary. If i were you at this stage and have the means to get another SATA, set up a RAID.
this way your twin SATA RAID level 0 config allows you to store data on the hard drive with more confidence then one copy of the data on one drive.

It also heavily depends on your motherboard, so I can only give you the basic premise to your problem.

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Agent Dink
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Posted: 23rd Feb 2007 07:56
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Thanks Indi, I see what you mean. I'm by no means new at this stuff, but I was just curious to know whether the hard drive would accept being Secondary then switched to Primary and whether it would still function correctly as if it were always Primary from the start. I never tried that before, and I didn't want to waste time trying it and have it not work. I was simply trying to figure out the easiest and least invasive way to transfer my files and have as little downtime on my computer as possible.

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indi
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Posted: 23rd Feb 2007 09:50
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what is the other drive set to? im guessing its your primary ide.

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Richard Davey
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Posted: 23rd Feb 2007 12:02
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Dink - I cannot recommend highly enough this bit of software that will help you do exactly what you want to do with minimum downtime:

http://eu.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/migrateeasy/

I use the Acronis True Image 10 software on my PC to back-up my entire C drive every day, and it is beautiful! and I used their Migrate app once and it worked wonderfully. Definitely give it a thought. For me $40 vs. hours of messing and re-installing is just no comparison

Never trust a computer you can't throw out of a window
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Agent Dink
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Posted: 23rd Feb 2007 16:54 Edited at: 23rd Feb 2007 16:56
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Thanks Rich, I'll look into that Edit: Hey, the free trial is fully functional for 15 days. I'll definitely try this out today! Exactly what I want

Indi, yes, my IDE is set to Primary Master.

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Agent Dink
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Posted: 24th Feb 2007 06:21
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Don't mean to break any rules by double posting, but I wanted to thank you Rich for the great find. That program was excellent. I backed everything up JUST in case, but it turns out I didn't need to. I will definitely consider buying this program for future use. There was an odd little issue, I had to restart my Theme service from the administrator's tools in control panel, but other than that, everything seems perfect so far

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Lost in Thought
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Location: U.S.A. : Douglas, Georgia
Posted: 24th Feb 2007 06:25
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Quote: "Sector-by-sector support for unknown and corrupted file systems"


Wow, thanks Rich. It missed this years list, but I will definitely be buying it next year.

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NeX the Fairly Fast Ferret
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Posted: 28th Feb 2007 18:10
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Came across this, and it reminded me of my grandfather's nearly 20 year old Amstrad - still ticking away today with its 1MB HDD.


Since the other one was scaring you guys so much...
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