Need some help with hard drive 'swapping'.

My sister and I have agreed to swap hard drives, because she has a 144gb one and uses about 40gb, and i have an 80gb one and only have a few gb's remaining! Trouble is, i'm not a hard drive buff, and need help. This is how I was planning to carry this out, but I don't know if it will work.

1) Move all my docs onto my sisters PC via network - DONE
2) Reformat my hard drive and reinstall Windows
3) Move all my stuff and sisters stuff onto my hard drive from her PC via network
4) Reformat my sisters hard drive and reinstall Windows
5) Swap hard drives
6) Get all my stuff back from my sisters computer (who now has my old hard drive)

I thought this would work, but then my friend said something about not being able to swap hard drives because of problems with drivers, and me needing to do a load of things in safe mode etc.

Can anyone here help me with this?

How ya doing, buddy?

So long as you format the hard drives and install windows before you want to make use of the hard drives then you should be OK.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by Thalin

My sister and I have agreed to swap hard drives, because she has a 144gb one and uses about 40gb, and i have an 80gb one and only have a few gb's remaining! Trouble is, i'm not a hard drive buff, and need help. This is how I was planning to carry this out, but I don't know if it will work.

1) Move all my docs onto my sisters PC via network - DONE
2) Reformat my hard drive and reinstall Windows
3) Move all my stuff and sisters stuff onto my hard drive from her PC via network
4) Reformat my sisters hard drive and reinstall Windows
5) Swap hard drives
6) Get all my stuff back from my sisters computer (who now has my old hard drive)

I thought this would work, but then my friend said something about not being able to swap hard drives because of problems with drivers, and me needing to do a load of things in safe mode etc.

Can anyone here help me with this?

Internal hard drives should never need drivers. What your friend was refering to is if you just swap both hard drives as is, Windows will see all these new pieces of hardware, freak out and basically go into the fetal postion and die (this is mainly because the motherboard drivers are installed at the installation of the OS and it can't really handle a change of that magnitude very well). Just reinstall Windows after transfering the hard drives to their new PCs and everything should work just fine.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

What I would do is hook *both* drives to your computer, with the 144 as the main one. Format and reinstall your OS of choice on the 144 one, keeping everything saved on the smaller drive and CDs/DVDs as needed, then transfer from the smaller drive to the larger. Then, remove the smaller drive and put it in your sister's computer, reformat, and install her OS of choice. This way each hard drive has been formatted and installed on the computer it's going to permanently live in, which will solve any driver problems Windows might have.

As a side note, its things like this (particulary the data juggling) that make me glad I use a second hard drive as a dedicated data drive, with my primary drive used primarily for the OS and software. That way, I can always swap out the primary drive or reformat it without juggling my data around. Quite a usefull technique if you can afford a second drive. Partitioning a single can help as well, at least allowing you to keep one section of the hard drive with your music/video/documents/etc intact while formatting the other.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

OK I now have a new problem. The file problem is sorted.

I took the hard drive out of my sisters PC and found it was a SATA one, with no ribbon. I've never used one of these before, but thought i'd give it a shot. I connected the 4-pin power adapter as usual, and then the SATA wire from the SATA slot 1 thing on my mobo, to the other end on the hard drive.
I then turned on the PC, and in the BIOS, it can't pick up the hard drive. When I try and install Windows it tells me it also can't pick up a hard drive, although if I carry on with the boot as usual, it acts as if it's using my sisters PC, showing me a Norton GOBack boot screen etc.

I have an ASUS A7N8X motherboard, and the hard drive is a Western Digital WD1600. I tried putting the SATA Raid drivers for my motherboard onto a floppy, and pressed F6 as the Windows setup was loading. It said it had picked up the hard drive now thanks to the drivers, and so I pressed enter to continue, but then it just says it can't pick up the hard drive again when it is about to format and also in the BIOS.

I'm stumped. Can anyone help me?

Double Post:
Anybody?

I was speaking idiomatically.

Is the slave/master jumper properly set?

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Yes, it's just straight out of my sisters machine, who obviously would have had it primary/master.

FELIPE NO

I still havn't managed to do this.

Currently :

-The motherboard is set to RAID enabled (via jumper)
-The SATA cable is connected to the hard drive and SATA slot 1 on the mobo
-The jumper on the HD has been set to cable select and single installation, neither work
-The hard drive is not picked up in the BIOS
-When I press F6 to enter RAID utility at boot up, it picks up the drive. But I don't know where to go from there. I don't understand RAID, and as far as I know, all the tutorials I have read say disable it, or it's only needed when using 2 drives. I am only using one
-When Windows is loading the files at startup, and asks you to install a driver, I do so via floppy, it says it's picked up the hard drive (or just the driver...) and then when I press enter it just tells me there is no hard drive connected (again)

So, any ideas?

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Well, I am still thinking on it myself, but yeah, you don't need RAID (Redundant Array ISOMETHING Disks), as RAID basically mirrors your data either for back up, or splits it up for performance reasons. Howver, it requires at least two HDD, which you aren't using.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

It might even be due to some odd S-ATA controller compatibility issues. Maybe the drive isn't powered properly or whatever.

Although this is slightly off topic, but I strongly recommend you save yourself the hassle and get an external USB harddrive - especially if your main concern here is running out of free space. They're incredibly cheap now.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

HOORAY!

We have progress. It carried on with the setup, and got to the format screen. I'll continue later and hopefully it will be installed!

It had something to do with the SATA drivers on the floppy being out of date.

HOORAY!

Double Post:
OK, we have more problems. Whoopdeedoo.

I've managed to install the new hard drive on mine, and it did seem on my sister's machine too. I connected up the hard drive and DVD drive on the same ribbon, because there was no other way of doing it, and in my BIOS it told me the master was the DVD and slave was the HD. So, I went ahead and installed Windows. It installed fine, and then I installed SP2, restarted and DISK BOOT FAILURE - INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER - strange how it was working fine before. So, I swapped some cables around, fiddled with the jumpers, then it told me on boot up it was missing a .dll file in the Windows folder. So, I swapped things around again, and DISK BOOT FAILURE - INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER. This is all it says now, and what's worse, I can't even reinstall Windows now, I boot from the XP disk, it says inspecting system configuration, then sits on the black screen and does nothing.

I've had it with this. Can anyone offer any advice, because this is really p*ssing me off.

Double Post:
It just seems to be this cycle. One minute it says in BIOS the DVD drive and HD are picked up, I restart, it tells me only one can. I restart, the other one can, I change the jumper, restart, both can, etc. It just goes on, even if I restart and change nothing it'll show something different in the BIOS.

I really have no idea what to do from now.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Alright, let's try to experiment a bit. First, put your OLD hard drive back with your DVD rom to see if it starts becoming sane again.

Let me know how that works and perhaps we can pinpoint the problem (no promises though, as this is more trial and error. Some others may have more experience on this one).

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?