Right now i have a 120GB ide hd, and its getting full, and I just got a dv camera so im gonna need a lot more room. I want to get a new sata hd, and then probably reinstall windows on it, as my pc is a bit sluggish.

Im wondering If I can take out my current drive, stick in a new sata drive, install my oem windows that came with my pc on it, and then stick my old drive back in, and copy some of that data over to the new sata drive, and just use it as a 2nd hd. Now, windows would still be installed on this hd, and its the one that im using now. Is that a problem? Can you have 2 hds, both with windows install on them, in the same pc?

anyway im mainly looking for advice on a big sata hd thats ~200GB or so.

also my mobo had sata150 if that matters.

You can set the old HD as the slave and move the data over the new HD.

so the windows being installed on it wont cause any problems?

Not if you boot from the SATA drive then attach the old drive as a slave drive. Use the slave jumper setting.

Actually he most likely doesn't need to fiddle at all with jumpers since you can prioritize SATA over PATA during boot on most motherboards. Just remember to install SATA drivers (they're called SCSI drives during install) otherwise Windows wont boot. As for brand I'd recommend a Hitachi 7K250, it's fast and gives you a nice bang for the buck.
//Danne

If the old drive still has Windows on it, and has an "active" partition designated, you will trigger the Windows multi-boot manager if you boot with it installed. This will occur regardless of whether you have the SATA set as the boot drive in BIOS. If you have a tool like Partition Magic around, you can hide the Windows partition on the old drive. But then the data will be inaccessable.

I like to have drive images of everything, then I can copy whatever I want from the image. So, I would make an image of the old drive, then wipe it and avoid any problems. You can then save that image in case something comes up later on that you need a copy of.

yea.. but where do you store the image? a removable harddrive?

i have 100GB of stuff. Burining it on 4.7GB dvds is just 2 much work for me.
So isnt there some way for me to tell windows to not multiboot?

You can remove the boot menu...
//Danne

I can't imagine what could take up 100GB of space, except video. I would remove everything non-essential, then partition the drive and store the image on the new partition, You can then just leave that partition and image in place.
If that's not feasable, then partition the new drive, store the image on the second partition and install Windows on the 1st partition.

But I agree that making an image of 100GB is not a great solution, although it would compress to around 50-60GB with max compression. You're not likely to gain much in performance with the new drive, so you also have the option of using it as your storage drive for the time being. Copy what you need to it then wipe the old one and re-install Windows to the same drive.

Still another option is to do a disc cloning operation to the new drive, re-sizing the current volume to the new drive's size. The drive will come with a tool for doing this. Then you can wipe the old drive and copy what you need from the new drive to the old one before wiping the new one and re-installing. Kind of a round-about method, but reasonably safe.

In any case, be sure you are fully backed up before attempting any of this. If you need to use the new drive to make an image of the old one, that's the safest way to go. Just be sure you are not formatting the new drive when you install Windows, cause that'll erase the image. Hense the suggestion to partition the new drive first and store the image on the second partition. Hope this helps.

If you're concerned about have two primary active partitions, then use PartitionMagic, Bootit NG, or equivalent to convert the old primary active partition to a logical partition. The partition will still be visible to windows.

meh, this is getting confusing. Im going to want to install windows on the new sata drive. So say i just take out the old drive for the time being, and use the new drive for a while, and put wat i have from dvds on it. If I later find that I want something from my old hd, then could i just swap them out? (i think this is just like multibooting?) Anyway Later down the road, when i stick my old one back in, Can I boot to the new one, and dl partition stuff on that one and use it to then convert my old drive to a "logical paration"

As long as that will sort of work I will just do that for now. Ill probably leave my old drice intact outside of my pc for a little while, while im getting the new sata drive up to speed with my programs and games and stuff.

Also, assuming i eventually get both hd working together in the same system - Where should I be storing my video editing stuff, and windows page file and stuff.

I use adobe premiere and i heard its better to have it on a different hd from windows? Anyone know about this?

Here's how I would approach this issue. Install the new HD and add windows. Download Bootit ng. Create a large extended logical partition D AFTER the primary active partition C. Use Bootit ng to create an IMAGE FILE of the C partition and put the image file in the D partition. This will allow you to recover everything in the C partition, using this image file. Now add the old hard drive. Copy all the stuffs that you want to keep from the old hard drive to the D extended logical partition. Remove the old hard drive and restore the image file back to the C partition. Reboot. Verify that you can now access the data in the D partition. If all is well, then format the old HD as a logical partition.

I always keep the OS separate from the applications. For best performance, you want to put important stuffs on the FASTER drive. Connect the old HD as a slave drive.

still a bit over my head, but thats ok. ill just use that idea if i find i really need my data. For now iill just keep my old drive out of my system, once i get the new drive. Thanks for all of your advice.

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