jepherz

is that possible? (title) I recently upgraded my computer and kept my old hard drive. Now i got my SATA hard drive and want that to be my primary instead of me IDE. I went from a DFI lanparty with AMD single core to a gigabyte with intel quad, people seem to be suprised that I am able to do this without reformatting my hard drive, both here and at some other forum...i dont know why =]. is it possible to move all the data from 1 HD to another though? i know that if i just copy and paste everything normally I'd be missing somethings like the partitions tables and registry cause I dual boot this with XP and ubuntu...

temeteus82

You would be missing MBR and some other important stuff. And if your hard drives have different capacities then you really should do clean install of windows to the SATA drive. And set the PATA drives jumpers so that it's slave. Then install the linux.

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OldBuzzard

Unless you got it as an OEM drive, you should have gotten some software from the drive mfg. to use that for the initial allocation and formatting of partitions. Even then, you can usually D/L that software from the makes site.

Maxtors came with MAXBLAST, and one of the options available was to make the Maxtor a CLONE of the old drive you were replacng it with.

Since you are using SATA and PATA, after cloning, all you would need to do is go into the BIOS and make the SATA the primary boot HDD, and you should be good to go. There should be no need to change any settings on the PATA drive.

If it was me, I'd just leave the PATA as-is for a bit, just to make sure all is well with the SATA before wiping out any OS/data on it. Once you are satisified that the new SATA is OK, then you can clean off the PATA and use it for data storage.

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When looking for a reason as to why things go wrong, never rule out sheer STUPIDITY

dj_stick

if you have at least one seagate hard-drive, i like to use the seagate discwizard software - always worked well for me

EDIT: keep the PATA jumper at master - it'll be the master of it's channel only, not of all the disk drives - you set that in the BIOS (haveing no master on an IDE channel can often cause strange problems)

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jepherz

OH!!! thats pretty smart. lemme see if this is what you are trying to say though: I should plug in the new SATA as a slave first and make it clone everything thats in the primary old PATA. then after its done cloning, i make the new SATA my primary and my old PATA the slave through the BIOs?

I don't have a seagate. the old is a maxtor, it did come with a CD and im pretty sure i still have it, but im going to have to find it. the new SATA is a western digital. it came with a CD. does it let me clone though? I haven't checked its contents yet.

since its my old HD thats the maxtor, will that cloning program work on cloning whats in the maxtor into the WD?

My current PATA im pretty sure is plugged in as the slave, and my DVD drive the master. I had to set it up that way cause of the length of the cable.

OldBuzzard

1. Install the new WD SATA. There are no master/slave settings for SATA drives.

2. Do not change any jumpers on the DVD or PATA.

3. Boot up, and use the WD software to clone the Maxtor to it. You may have to go ito the BIOS and make sure that the SATA controller is enabled, and that you have it set for NON Raid before you can do the clone.

4. After cloning, boot and go into BIOS.

5. In BIOS, in the boot sequence area, change the bootable HDD to the WD SATA.

6. Let it boot, and make sure that it's booting from the SATA.

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When looking for a reason as to why things go wrong, never rule out sheer STUPIDITY

jepherz

=D

I'll try to find time to do that either tomorow or the weekend. Work hella sucks. are you sure WD has a cloning program though?