Windows Upgrading C: drive

I have a PC with Windows XP Pro and it has a 30GB C drive with only 2GB left - so it's time for an upgrade.

For the next hard-drive, I am considering using a Western Digital Raptor, either 75GB or 150GB (PC has seperate drive for data) should I be worried about the reliability of the raptors?

As for makeing the upgrade- how should I go about replacing the C - drive - I really do not want to be forced to re-install windows or all the software (I don't mind doing the OS and drivers but all the software could take forever). What would be the best way to replace the hard drive?

One idea I have is to use the windows backup utility and make a backup of the C drive - then I believe I would have to install Windows onto the new hard-drive and restore the backup to the new C drive - would this cause any problems? I also have access to Partition Magic 8 and though I haven't looked at the software in a long time, I believe it might provide a way to make a direct copy of the data from the old to the new hard-drive, would this method be better than using a windows created backup?

Also, well I have a new thread talking about installing windows - I am considering moving up to Vista. However, a rumor I heard a long time ago was a retail upgrade version of Vista (Home Premium for me) won't allow for a clean install like the old windows upgrade editions would - is this true?

L J

 

raptors rule, if all you're going to put on your c: is your OS then go for the 75GB, otherwise may as well get the 150GB.

As for backing up, norton ghost or some other cloning app is probably the best solution. Windows backup is a waste of time.

As for vista upgrade, isn't there an exploit in the code so you CAN do a fresh install with upgrade version? something like installing vista 30day and then reinstalling over that image

 

install your new drive, use the gparted liveCD to copy your primary partition to your new drive, set the boot flag, and then erase your old drive.

and don't bother upgrading to vista. the only improvement is the search, the rest is worse than xp.

 

The gparted LiveCD looks very tempting, however I thought Linux support for NTFS writing was not yet finished. Thanks for the recomendation, I will have to experiment with that a little - but for now, the PC needing the new drive is not one I want to test gparted on, office PC - takes many hours to re-install and setup all the software if something goes wrong. . .

True, but I think I will need to upgrade eventually - so why not get a copy now and be a guinea pig? Really the main reason I want to upgrade is 'cause I like the shiny new GUI, and DirectX 10 (granted my PC cant yet handle DX 10. . .). I'll be quite surprised if the price of Vista ever goes down, I mean I don't think the price of XP was ever reduced.

L J

 

As long as you don't mind it taking a while, try CloneCD (Free)
Only downside, it only allows smaller to larger, and won't resize the partition.
Just used it to move WinVista to a larger drive, luckily Vista allows for resizing of it's own partition.

As for resizing an XP partition, I'd go with the gparted idea, we did this at work to a Server (Win2K3), and had no problems, just took a while...

 

Today I just realized a possible issue - currently the PC needing a new drive is running all IDE hard-drives, the new drive is a SATA - could this 'cause any problems?

L J

 

As long as your mobo has SATA, there should be no problems.

 

On my Gparted live CD test with a spare Win2K Gparted did not copy the MBR - I think everything else might have been successful - but no MBR is a minor problem. So I booted to the Win2K setup CD. First thing the CD said was "can not read boot partition to check for install of windows". Despite this I told setup to repair a copy of windows - setup politely informed me that it could not find an installation of Windows to repair and forced me to exit. I don't know if XP will be different - I have been trying to avoid using Gparted on any useful PCs (and all of those run XP) but at least so far Gparted has been working pretty good (well, despite the little issue with the MBR).

L J

** Well I now have succesfully cloned a Windows 2000 system using Gparted. I eventually found out part of my problems were related to just plain weird jumper settings on the drive I cloned to (thus why setup refused to even attempt to repair the install). The drive lacked an MBR - OK, thats understandable. Setup could fix that - but after that Windows still refused to boot - because the partition was not set as active. In the end I must say I am quite pleased with Gparted - sure it had a few minor issues but it is Linux and I doubt cloning Windows drives was the main goal of the software.

L J