Hard drive question

My daughter has a dell 2.2 gig, 30 gig HD, she wants a 80 gig, she took it in and the guy ( new computer store) and he couldnt get it to mirror copy and wanted her to use it as a slave disk.

I havent done a mirrored HD since Windows ME, and Maxtor and other HD would include a floppy that would put everything on your new Hard Drive,

If I volunteer to put in a 80 gig, am I looking at trouble? and what HD are best for doing that, I like Western Digital, Maxtor like to run by themselves, at least for me they do,

thanks

 

I have tried to mirror drives on two separate systems using Maxtor's utility maxblast with absolutely no luck at all. For some reason several files were not able to be transferred so after several attempts I gave up and did a fresh install. I have a friend that has done it several times and works for him, guess I got bad luck when it comes to this. if you attempt it good luck.

 

Installing a new hard drive can sometimes be as simple as mounting it on the HD rack and plugging in a four prong mollex connector (unless you are looking at an SATA drive or somethnig) and connecting the IDE cable. BiOS and Windows will detect the presence of the hard drive in most cases and there will be no further action required to get it working properly besides a simple format.

I currently have two 80 gig Western Digital hard drives installed in my computer as we speak, one of them has been running for a year and a half to two years, and the other considerably shorter. They both run smooth as can be. I have experience with Seagate aswell, I have a 10 gig Seagate drive that has been running almost constantly since 2000/2001, so I think they are pretty good. I don't have any experience with Maxtor so I coldn't say.

I would recommend just doing a complete reinstall of your opperating system and transfering your files over. You will probably find that the computer will run a lot better afterwards. I'd keep the old 30 gig drive as the slave, and maybe used for data back-up since it most likely runs at 5200 RPM, instead of 7200 like pretty much all modern hard drives do.

 

that is what I thought I might do ( make the 30 the slave, 80 a master)

I will have to ask her if she has her XP disk,

thanks for the input

 

Though it costs money. I've successfully "GHOSTED" smaller drives to larger drives (even sata) using Norton's ghost. There are a few other programs that can do similar tasks.

Perhaps:
Paragon drive backup
http://majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=146

Partition Logic (free, I haven't tried this one)
http://majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=4780

I'm sure there are other options out there.

 

Use norton ghost... workes every time......youl needs a bootable floppy...