zalman00
asked on
Basic questions about installing a second internal hdd in my pc
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1- My motherboard is Intel 915 G chipset with H.T tech 4 GB DDR400 memory
3 GHz 1 MB L 2 Cache 800 Mhz FSB and I have a dvdrw on the motherboard 2 gig kingston memory and 250 hardrive with three partitons within a extended partition with optical drives dvdrw DL benq 16x and LG cdrw 52x and a floppy drive with a ups connected to the usb port , printer, scanner would my computers motherboard be able to handle a second hardrive without any problem ?
2-With a second hardrive will it open automatically like the primary c drive when I turn on the computer or after rebooting or will it stay dormat only until I physically click it on myself ..
Or would the operating system or computers brain get mixed up and sometimes the second hardrive will open up instead of my primary c drive after a reboot ? Would I have those kinds of problems with a second internal hdd inside my computer ?
I know now if I want to open any of my three partitions I have to click on my computer or explorer , find them and click on them to bring them on the screen , would a second hardrive work the same way ?
3- I want to only use the second hardrive exclusively for storage of my c drive ghosted mirror image copy and for periodic incremental backups to update the backup copy
.Maybe a partition for my docs in the second hdd , but not for another os like windows 98 thats out of the question ..
I would create a mirror image of my c drive and after that’s finished put it in the second hardrive ..
4- Then on subsequent incremental backups I would presume that the ghost 9.0 software would overwrite the previous backup data in the second hardrive and then reinstall what was erased plus insert the lastest new c drive data on the second hardrive is that correct ? .
5- And I suppose it would have its own letter not C again ?
6- If I my hardrive dies and It needs to be replaced , then I won’t be able to access windows xp to get to [my computer folder] or windows explorer in order to click on the second hardrive would I
So how do I get the second hardrive to take over until I buy a new hardrive and install it to replace the primary one that went south ? And If I did get to the second hdd in the event the first one ( primary C drive ) fails , would that backup copy be bootable like the primary C drive was. ?
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1- My motherboard is Intel 915 G chipset with H.T tech 4 GB DDR400 memory
3 GHz 1 MB L 2 Cache 800 Mhz FSB and I have a dvdrw on the motherboard 2 gig kingston memory and 250 hardrive with three partitons within a extended partition with optical drives dvdrw DL benq 16x and LG cdrw 52x and a floppy drive with a ups connected to the usb port , printer, scanner would my computers motherboard be able to handle a second hardrive without any problem ?
2-With a second hardrive will it open automatically like the primary c drive when I turn on the computer or after rebooting or will it stay dormat only until I physically click it on myself ..
Or would the operating system or computers brain get mixed up and sometimes the second hardrive will open up instead of my primary c drive after a reboot ? Would I have those kinds of problems with a second internal hdd inside my computer ?
I know now if I want to open any of my three partitions I have to click on my computer or explorer , find them and click on them to bring them on the screen , would a second hardrive work the same way ?
3- I want to only use the second hardrive exclusively for storage of my c drive ghosted mirror image copy and for periodic incremental backups to update the backup copy
.Maybe a partition for my docs in the second hdd , but not for another os like windows 98 thats out of the question ..
I would create a mirror image of my c drive and after that’s finished put it in the second hardrive ..
4- Then on subsequent incremental backups I would presume that the ghost 9.0 software would overwrite the previous backup data in the second hardrive and then reinstall what was erased plus insert the lastest new c drive data on the second hardrive is that correct ? .
5- And I suppose it would have its own letter not C again ?
6- If I my hardrive dies and It needs to be replaced , then I won’t be able to access windows xp to get to [my computer folder] or windows explorer in order to click on the second hardrive would I
So how do I get the second hardrive to take over until I buy a new hardrive and install it to replace the primary one that went south ? And If I did get to the second hdd in the event the first one ( primary C drive ) fails , would that backup copy be bootable like the primary C drive was. ?
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SOLUTION
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There is a difference between "making an image" of a disk, and copying the disk itself. From your question, I presumed that you were making an image of the disk, but not that you were actually copying the first disk to the 2nd disk (which I still take to be the case).
ASKER
Waltzman thank you for your help ,
Let me reiterate to make sure I am clear on your instruction
If the folder has the same name as the folder I intend to image then I would probably get a pop up screen telling me something like “all the folders are going to be erased do you still want to to go thru with it ?” and I would click yes or yes to all and It would override the folder
( erase and reinsert what was erased plus add the new data to the add data ( new files in the same folder with the same name )
If I changed the name of the folder I will image the new named folder with added new files plus the older version of the same folder without the newer files and that folder will remain as a duplicate folder of the changed name folder
ok understood !
Oh so the second hardrive has no OS so its not bootable it only has an image of the OS ok never knew that !
So If my primary hardrive fails , first I need to replace it , next then use the ghost recovery boot cd and this would bring up ghost ( but not window xp ?) , navigate to the restore screen and tell ghost where to restore the image to .
In some cases, Windows will detect that the hard drive has changed, and you will still have to do a "repair" install of Windows XP.
By repair install of windows xp do you mean the ghost copy is not going to do anything for me and I will have to reinstall the OS and all the programs , configurations everything from scratch , in otherwords reformat from scratch ? I sure would hope not !
Leww , thank you
Yes I have a pretty big tower case
If there is any problem with having only a single IDE/ATA connector which supports two devices With two optical drives I am faced with either: (1) installing SATA HDDs;
or (2) installing a PCI-to-IDE/ATA adapter. The PCI combo card out now that has both an IDE/ATA port and a SATA port for internal access, plus an external SATA port for portable device access. So that’s covered by the adapter
As far as If I decide I want to go the external hdd route , then I would use the usb2.0 and not the firewire , I can’t use it my pc is not equipped for it , and usb is fine with me .
I am with you leww, I use nero backup software for my regular backups
( my documents folders ) and have been putting them on cd-r or dvd-r
as far as the full backup that would be every three months or so …
5- And I suppose it would have its own letter not C again ?
Not sure I follow...
what I meant was the new second hardrive would not have the letter C assigned to it but maybe J or K or whatever and the partition in it may be would be K or L ?
Quote :
You would either reconfigure the BIOS to boot off the second hard drive
I would configure the bios to boot from the second hard drive first as opposed to the default with it to boot from the floopy , yes that’s doable
Is that the only way I could get the computer going after installing a new hardrive to replace one that hypotectecally failed .?
(assuming you were making Ghost images of a "disk-to-disk" type as opposed to a "disk-to-file" type). Or you might have to physically swap around the drive connections.this is something I could not do .
watzman : Quote :
There is a difference between "making an image" of a disk, and copying the disk itself. From your question, I presumed that you were making an image of the disk, but not that you were actually copying the first disk to the 2nd disk (which I still take to be the case).
I don’t know that much about the software , never used it but I would guess making an image of the disk ( C drive ) so as to store it on a second hardrive to avoid clean install reformatting in case I need to replace my original hardrive
I don’t even know what the difference between the two are ??
They both seem like they are the same thing …
Unless what you refer to is as copying the first disk to the 2nd disk is the restore process ??
Let me reiterate to make sure I am clear on your instruction
If the folder has the same name as the folder I intend to image then I would probably get a pop up screen telling me something like “all the folders are going to be erased do you still want to to go thru with it ?” and I would click yes or yes to all and It would override the folder
( erase and reinsert what was erased plus add the new data to the add data ( new files in the same folder with the same name )
If I changed the name of the folder I will image the new named folder with added new files plus the older version of the same folder without the newer files and that folder will remain as a duplicate folder of the changed name folder
ok understood !
Oh so the second hardrive has no OS so its not bootable it only has an image of the OS ok never knew that !
So If my primary hardrive fails , first I need to replace it , next then use the ghost recovery boot cd and this would bring up ghost ( but not window xp ?) , navigate to the restore screen and tell ghost where to restore the image to .
In some cases, Windows will detect that the hard drive has changed, and you will still have to do a "repair" install of Windows XP.
By repair install of windows xp do you mean the ghost copy is not going to do anything for me and I will have to reinstall the OS and all the programs , configurations everything from scratch , in otherwords reformat from scratch ? I sure would hope not !
Leww , thank you
Yes I have a pretty big tower case
If there is any problem with having only a single IDE/ATA connector which supports two devices With two optical drives I am faced with either: (1) installing SATA HDDs;
or (2) installing a PCI-to-IDE/ATA adapter. The PCI combo card out now that has both an IDE/ATA port and a SATA port for internal access, plus an external SATA port for portable device access. So that’s covered by the adapter
As far as If I decide I want to go the external hdd route , then I would use the usb2.0 and not the firewire , I can’t use it my pc is not equipped for it , and usb is fine with me .
I am with you leww, I use nero backup software for my regular backups
( my documents folders ) and have been putting them on cd-r or dvd-r
as far as the full backup that would be every three months or so …
5- And I suppose it would have its own letter not C again ?
Not sure I follow...
what I meant was the new second hardrive would not have the letter C assigned to it but maybe J or K or whatever and the partition in it may be would be K or L ?
Quote :
You would either reconfigure the BIOS to boot off the second hard drive
I would configure the bios to boot from the second hard drive first as opposed to the default with it to boot from the floopy , yes that’s doable
Is that the only way I could get the computer going after installing a new hardrive to replace one that hypotectecally failed .?
(assuming you were making Ghost images of a "disk-to-disk" type as opposed to a "disk-to-file" type). Or you might have to physically swap around the drive connections.this is something I could not do .
watzman : Quote :
There is a difference between "making an image" of a disk, and copying the disk itself. From your question, I presumed that you were making an image of the disk, but not that you were actually copying the first disk to the 2nd disk (which I still take to be the case).
I don’t know that much about the software , never used it but I would guess making an image of the disk ( C drive ) so as to store it on a second hardrive to avoid clean install reformatting in case I need to replace my original hardrive
I don’t even know what the difference between the two are ??
They both seem like they are the same thing …
Unless what you refer to is as copying the first disk to the 2nd disk is the restore process ??
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ASKER
Watzman ,
Just to know all my options before doing anything , is it advisable to partition an external hdd
( one partition) to have just for frequent backing up of personal data with other backup software perhaps nero or some other type like copyit from nero
one partition in an external usb 2 hardrive ?
Or will it ruin the external drive to partition it ?
Is this a practice that is done very frequently ?
Thank You
Sure, you can partition an external drive. What I did, with a 200 gig drive, was to create a 32 gig FAT32 partition, and let the rest be one single very large NTFS partition. This way, if I am working with a machine running Windows 98, I can still use the drive (with the FAT32 partition), but for most purposes, I use the 160 gig NTFS partition.
The second hard drive will appear automatically in "My Computer" and explorer (if it's properly installed). Any partitions on it will be given drive letters automatically according to Microsoft's rules for this. This is the same way as your current partitions work.
The Ghost software creates files that contain images. The images are current (updated) as of the date on which they are created. If you store the images on a partition in the new drive, they will replace an older image only if the file has the same filename and is placed in the same directory (folder), otherwise both new and old images would be present (you could of course manually delete them). Often the date is part of the filename, but that is discretionary. I actually recommend that you keep not only the most recent image, but at least one older one. You could also organize the images into folders. [In many cases, the images will be be broken up into multiple files to facilitate burning them to CD or DVD media].
As you have described this situation, the 2nd hard drive would not be able to "take over", it neither has an OS on it, nor is it bootable. But it would still hold the images and your system. In this case, what you would do is replace the 1st hard drive (with what would now be a 3rd drive), then boot Ghost using the bootable CD or recovery media that you [hopefully] have created. This would start Ghost, which would then be able to restore your "new 1st" (3rd) hard drive using the images on the 2nd hard drive.
In some cases, Windows will detect that the hard drive has changed, and you will still have to do a "repair" install of Windows XP.