Topic: HDD problems / HDD ghosting revisited.

[Quemaqua]

Okay, so the 300GB HDD that I got with my PC died, as some of you surely remember.  It was a big deal and I had to RMA it, which I didn't do for like a year because I bought a replacement 80GB drive that I used for a year like an idiot.  Well, I finally did it, and got my refurbished drive.

So what happened was this: when I got the replacement drive initially, I installed it alongside my 300GB problem drive.  The original dead drive was C:, and the replacement was E:.  When I took the problem drive out, I was left with E: and nothing more.  This has been an odd experience.  Now I have a C: drive again, because the 300GB refurbished drive is in there now, but my operating system and such are on the small E: drive.  The problem is that the small drive is showing signs of having the same fucking problems that the 300GB drive did, and I want to ghost it back to the 300GB drive because hopefully that one has more chance of surviving the long haul.  At least I hope.  I'm beginning to lose confidence in Seagate, to be honest.  Sometimes the 80GB drive just won't boot, just like the 300GB one did after a while.  It boots most of the time, then sometimes just won't.

Anyway... so I want to get my operating system and progs and... well, everything, over to the 300GB drive.  But I honestly don't know what I'm doing, and I assume that doing this would break all my registry entries and installations that currently point to the E: drive.

And... uh... damn I'm tired.  I don't think I'm even making sense now.  Anyway, if anyone has some advice for me, provided they can even read this incoherent mess, I'd be appreciative.

[Pugnate]

Was your HD by Seagate?

[Quemaqua]

Yeah.  They used to have a great reputation, but I've read some less than stellar things since I purchased these drives.  My own experiences certainly don't seem to have worked out quite as hoped.  Though their warranty is really great.

[Pugnate]

Their drives get the best reviews, but I have an issue with their quality control. I've had really bad experiences with their drives, as have had quite a few people that I know.

Yes, their warranties are the best, and the harddrives get replaced asap etc. But the funny thing is that their warranty seems to come into play a lot. Many of my friends with Seagates have had to replace their drives at least once. I've twice had to have mine changed, within a year of purchasing too.

One on my Seagates starting making WHIRRRRING noises a month after purchase. The other crashed 7 months in.

The two SATA Seagates I bought a year ago are running fine though. But I've never had problems with Western Digital, nor have I read about the WD drives crashing as much.

[WindAndConfusion]

Que: I suggest you make an 80 GB partition on the new drive, duplicate everything (using something like dd), verify the contents, and wipe the old drive. When you boot back into Windows, the 80 GB partition on the new drive should be E: and the old one can be whatever it wants to be.

Your bootloader might bitch that your boot partition has changed, so be prepared to deal with that.

Pug: You obviously have more money than anyone else here. Please give me some.

[Pugnate]

Pug: You obviously have more money than anyone else here. Please give me some

Oo

Because I have two hard drives? Doesn't everyone?

BTW, I am really poor. The only money I have is sent to me by Que.

[WindAndConfusion]

Because I have two hard drives?

No. You obviously have a lot of money because a) you seem to upgrade your computer constantly, and b) you're the only person I know who cares about >$400 video cards.

[Pugnate]

My spending priorities need a lot of work, but I unfortunately don't have a lot of money.

The last time I really spent anything on a comp was when I bought the one I currently have. Here I even found the thread:

http://www.overwritten.net/forum/index.php?topic=960.0

That was a year ago. Haven't really upgraded anything since, though I did get a 22'' monitor.

As for $400 video cards, I think almost everyone here has an Xbox 360 aside from their comp. With accessories, I am sure those consoles cost north of $400.

But yes, I need a money tree.

So what happened was this: when I got the replacement drive initially, I installed it alongside my 300GB problem drive.  The original dead drive was C:, and the replacement was E:.  When I took the problem drive out, I was left with E: and nothing more.  This has been an odd experience.  Now I have a C: drive again, because the 300GB refurbished drive is in there now, but my operating system and such are on the small E: drive.  The problem is that the small drive is showing signs of having the same fucking problems that the 300GB drive did, and I want to ghost it back to the 300GB drive because hopefully that one has more chance of surviving the long haul.  At least I hope.  I'm beginning to lose confidence in Seagate, to be honest.  Sometimes the 80GB drive just won't boot, just like the 300GB one did after a while.  It boots most of the time, then sometimes just won't.

What is odd is that your replacement is showing the same problems. I think you should make a new partition where you can back up all your stuff, and then start from scratch. It is a day's work, but it would end this issue once and for all.

Also if you do take that step, then make sure you think about all the stuff you want to back up before you format.

[scottws]

I agree.  I wouldn't want to go through the headache of either having a fucked up registry or having my system drive on E:.  If I were you, I'd install XP on the new drive (personally I'd make an OS+app partition and a data partition, but that's me), then just copy whatever important data you have from the old drive onto the new one in wherever you are going to store your data.

As far as drive quality, I've owned Maxtor, Seagate, and Samsung and haven't had trouble with any of them.  The Maxtor's were my favorite.  Very responsive and whisper quiet.  Too bad they are defunct.

[Quemaqua]

Actually, didn't Maxtor get purchased by Seagate?

Anyway, that's the kind of solution I'm leaning toward now (partitioning the big drive and reinstalling the OS on there).  Honestly, I could really use a reformat, so this wouldn't be a bad opportunity to start from a clean slate.  The issue is simply that I hate doing this crap.  Reinstalling 8 jillion programs make me wants to die every time I do it.  But if all my stuff gets backed up, at least all I have to do is take a look and see what needs to be reinstalled, and all my regular data will be safe.  So maybe it won't be so bad.

How big would you guys make a dedicated OS partition?  I had thought about doing this before, but it didn't end up happening.  What I was going to do was use the small drive and just make that my OS drive, but given its potential for problems I really don't want to be booting from it now.

[scottws]

Actually, didn't Maxtor get purchased by Seagate?

Yeah, but as far as I know they are just a brand name Seagate uses now.

Anyway, that's the kind of solution I'm leaning toward now (partitioning the big drive and reinstalling the OS on there).  Honestly, I could really use a reformat, so this wouldn't be a bad opportunity to start from a clean slate.  The issue is simply that I hate doing this crap.  Reinstalling 8 jillion programs make me wants to die every time I do it.  But if all my stuff gets backed up, at least all I have to do is take a look and see what needs to be reinstalled, and all my regular data will be safe.  So maybe it won't be so bad.

How big would you guys make a dedicated OS partition?  I had thought about doing this before, but it didn't end up happening.  What I was going to do was use the small drive and just make that my OS drive, but given its potential for problems I really don't want to be booting from it now.

Well the "OS partition" really would need to have enough space to house all your installed apps too.  I have two drives, an 80 and a 500.  The 80 is my OS+app drive, obviously.  Under Vista it's almost full already with what I've got on here so far, but I had tons of crap installed on the drive when I had XP and still had about 10 GB free.

It depends.  If you like to have tons (like 15+) games installed at the same time plus a lot of other apps, you're going to need a pretty big partition, like around 60-80.  If you only have a couple of games installed at a time and they are all older games, then you could probably get away with something like 30-40 pretty easily.

[Pugnate]

My XP OS partition is 25 GB as is my Vista partition. Both partitions are more than enough for the respective OS's as well as applications/utility programs.

My third partition (after the two for the operating systems) contains music, videos, "nature" videos, text work, and all my images. My fifth partition has all my temporary download files, while the last few partitions are for games. My recommendation is that you keep the OS partition to be just big enough for the OS and other non gaming programs, so that you can save space for other partitions.

The reason is that if you want to format or reinstall your OS, you don't have to go about backing up your music or your videos etc, as they are on their own partition.   You just back up your save files (as modern games keep them in My documents), your internet bookmarks, and a bunch of other minor stuff and that's pretty much it.  Having a separate partition for your media stuff gives you some independence.

Also I highly recommend a partition on its own for torrent downloads etc. On the rare occasion that your PC restarts while downloading a large file, it may screw up the entire partition. Formatting something that contains only temp. download files is a far less painful experience.

[scottws]

25GB in Vista?  How?  I currently have only 15GB free on my 80GB drive.

[Pugnate]

I just checked. It is 20 GB and with 7GB free. I guess I just don't install a lot on my OS partitions. I've had bad experiences with that.

[scottws]

I always install apps to the same partition as the OS.  What's the point of reinstalling just the OS when all the registry handles will be broken on the installed apps?

[Pugnate]

What apps do you mean? I have all my apps on my OS drive, but my games have their own partition.

Both my XP and Vista drives have plenty of space left.

[scottws]

Apps and games.  I put it all on the same partition.  I don't even like using a lot of different partitions because if you estimate wrong, you end up with a full partition over here and a partition with lots of empty space over here.

Then if you start putting stuff in the empty space, you break your organization badly.

[Cobra951]

If you ghost any drive, then replace the original with it, it should end up looking exactly the same in terms of software installs, regardless of whether there are components on other drives.  You can ghost a small drive to a larger drive without partitioning, and it will still work (and you will still get the extra space of the larger drive in the same partition).  Why can't you simply ghost the problem drive, replace the problem drive with the duplicate drive, and be about your happy computing business?  Am I missing something?

[Quemaqua]

I didn't think that would work because problem drive with current OS is E: and new drive that I just installed is C:.  If I ghost the E: to C:... then nothing will be right because everything on the C: drive will be telling me that the E: drive location is gone.  I mean, right?

Plus, I could use a fresh install anyway.

So my current thought is to just restart with the XP CD, make a 79GB partition for the OS on the big drive that leaves the other 200GB for games and downloads and crap, reinstall the OS to the 79GB partition, copy over stuff from the old OS drive to the new one.  That should work smoothly enough, and allow me the comfort of a reformat.  Then once I get what I want off the old drive, I'll just wipe it with a low level format and hope that whatever problems its having disappear or at least don't cause me any great pains down the road (I can deal with a broken program or something, but not a drive that halts my ability to so much as boot properly).

Does that sound reasonable?

[scottws]

It does to me.

[Quemaqua]

Well, I think that's my plan of attack, then.  It sounds like the best option and will give me the joy of a clean slate while still keeping all my crap intact for gradual copying as I go.

EDIT - Okay, what the fuck?  When I go to do the install, XP Setup tells me that my E: drive is C: (it isn't when XP is loaded), and that my C: drive (the new one) is D:.  What the hell?  Does it just automatically label them as C: and D: because they're the first and second drives?  I'm really confused now.

[Cobra951]

I'm really confused here.  Are you saying your boot drive (primary/master) is called E: under Windows instead of C:?  I should read what you posted earlier again.

Edit:  If I had a convoluted mess with drive letters not matching what the lower-level stuff expects, and I was starting over from scratch on the boot drive, I'd physically make it the primary/master and let it be C:.  Anything else is just asking for unhappiness from something, and you're formatting anyway, right?

[Pugnate]

Well, I think that's my plan of attack, then.  It sounds like the best option and will give me the joy of a clean slate while still keeping all my crap intact for gradual copying as I go.

EDIT - Okay, what the fuck?  When I go to do the install, XP Setup tells me that my E: drive is C: (it isn't when XP is loaded), and that my C: drive (the new one) is D:.  What the hell?  Does it just automatically label them as C: and D: because they're the first and second drives?  I'm really confused now.

haha...

Are you installing from Windows or from Dos? Because they will have different labels for drives. Heck, I dual boot, and both the OSs have different labels for the partitons.

[Quemaqua]

Well, everything's up and running.  Just have to get all my crap reinstalled and such.  Ugh.  I hate this part so much.

[WindAndConfusion]

Windows is God's punishment for a sinful world.

[Quemaqua]

I concur.

[Pugnate]

Windows is God's punishment for a sinful world.

Vista is god's punishment to Microsoft.

[Quemaqua]

We can only hope.  Those fuckers need to learn a few lessons.

[Pugnate]

You know I like many things about Vista, yet I'd never have it as my primary operating system. While it wins on booting speed, stability and ease of use, it is still not worth the admission fee. The biggest disappointments with Vista is the DX10 scam.

http://www.gamespot.com/features/6182140/p-2.html

Basically no discernible visual difference between XP hacked Very High, and Vista Very High, yet a big difference in terms of frame rate.

This leads me to the same conclusion as the rest of the PC gaming community; DX10 is a hack and is more bullshit created to sell an OS no one wants. I am just sick of being lied to, and being strong armed. With DX10 out of the window (no pun intended), what is the point of using Vista? While the OS does have its share of positives, are they really worth that much money? I mean it does look nice, but worth the extra power?

If it is used primarily for applications, then I guess it isn't too bad, but it is a definite no for a gamer.

I suppose a naive part of me believes that with future Crysis patching Vista performance will prove DX10 to everyone. But that is just wishful thinking.

So yea, screw Microsoft... and good thing Vista is biting them in the ass. What is wonderful is that they have been forced to change their policy on XP. They've had to push the deadline from December to June. I bet that's going to be the first of many pushes.