New HD Question

Arch · Post by **Arch** » Fri Jul 23, 2004 12:04 pm

I have a new 74gig Raptor drive on the way which I'm going to use to replace my SCSI setup. Is there any way I can get Windows to boot off the new drive without having to do a reinstall? The controller is going to be completely different so I'm not sure if it will work. Maybe something in the boot.ini?

Topher · Post by **Topher** » Fri Jul 23, 2004 12:05 pm

Partition Magic can copy the old drive to the new drive and then just set the new drive as the master.

Arch · Post by **Arch** » Fri Jul 23, 2004 12:19 pm

I have ghost to do that. My problems lies in the fact that WindowsNT+ freaks out if the controller its looking for at bootup disappears. Thats what I'm referring to.

Topher · Post by **Topher** » Fri Jul 23, 2004 12:21 pm

And here I thought I was being smart...

Krom · Post by **Krom** » Fri Jul 23, 2004 12:55 pm

That and Raptors are Serial ATA drives so "master" is COMPLETELY irrelevant, just like the SCSI drives he was starting with, they do not even have a setting.

I think he should just reinstall, I'd just install right over the old copy, that way all you need to do is redo all your updates. All the programs and stuff should stay the same.

Grendel · Post by **Grendel** » Fri Jul 23, 2004 2:23 pm

Uninstall the SCSI controller then ghost the disk. Should work.

Arch · Post by **Arch** » Fri Jul 23, 2004 2:23 pm

Grendel wrote:Uninstall the SCSI controller then ghost the disk. Should work.

No offense, but how am I going to ghost the drive without the SCSI controller in?

fliptw · Post by **fliptw** » Fri Jul 23, 2004 2:30 pm

uninstall the drivers for the SCSI controller from windows.

Arch · Post by **Arch** » Fri Jul 23, 2004 8:17 pm

Have you read the review of the 74gig drive on StorageReview? The Raptor beats the 10K.6 in every test. It only looses to a few of Maxtor's latest offerings. Its a very speedy drive indeed.

Why ditch the SCSI? Because I want to slim my machine down. This way I can loose the controller card and swap out 3 aging drives, which are certainly slower than the Raptor, and replace all of it with 1 drive using 1 small interface cable.

Arch · Post by **Arch** » Fri Jul 23, 2004 9:36 pm

I doubt that will the case. The Raptor is both faster in terms of transfer rate and seek times compared to my Atlas 10K III drives. The 15K.3 is a nice drive, but expensive and loud. I'll post what I think once I get it and have everything loaded up.

Arch · Post by **Arch** » Sat Jul 24, 2004 11:47 am

Its a shame that the 74gig 15K.3 is around $550-600

I'm getting the Raptor for $165 and I'm selling my current setup for $205. No doubt that the SCSI was nice to have, but my drives been be eclipsed by the Raptor and even some 7200rpm IDE drives. Time for some new ones. Having 1 drive instead of 3 is a huge plus.

As far as the Windows boot thing goes, I think I'm going to do a reinstall. I haven't reinstalled since December when I got my P4 so I think its about time to wipe everything and start fresh again. Unfortunately that means I will have to call MS again to activate my copy of XP again because this will be the 900,000th time I've installed it. Ugh.

Anyone have any tips on partitioning a 74gig drive? Its the largest drive I've had by far and I usually just use one big partition on my other drives. Any reason to split this 74giger up?

Krom · Post by **Krom** » Sat Jul 24, 2004 1:26 pm

Just one partition is fine, personally I have my boot drive configured as a 6 GB C: partiton that I install windows and a select few programs on, and the remaing 105 GB goes to D: where I keep all other programs, games and downloads. E: is 465 GB of mass storage where I keep MP3s, video files, cd/dvd images, rips, all that big stuff.

Arch · Post by **Arch** » Sun Jul 25, 2004 7:31 pm

Just an FYI for everyone. I ghosted my SCSI boot drive onto a 40gig Seagate drive and I was able to boot from it without a problem. No repairs or any other funky stuff needed. Just ghost and go.

Woot!