Failing Hard Drive, need some advice

[twstokes]

Ok, here's the deal:

I'm currently running Windows 2000 on my master (c:) drive 30GB, dual booting with Windows ME. Running slave is my new 60GB HD, with ALL of my media files, important files, etc. C:\ has been throwing me warning signs for a while now, and I don't want to risk it possibly failing on me. I simply want to just put everything on my slave, W2K, media, EVERYTHING.

Also, I want to convert this slave to NTFS. My questions:

1. What would be the best way to get everything off of the master on to the slave, without losing my current W2K and its registry?

2. What would be the risk of converting my slave, (that will be master now) to NTFS?

3. Could I possible copy EVERYTHING from the master to the slave, and make the slave master and everything be OK?

Thanks a lot, I hope you're not confused,
T.W. Stokes

[Dani]

Gosh there's a lot you want to do with these drives. I happen to be a fan of PowerQuest Partition Magic, but that's entirely up to you. Now is your 30gig drive partitioned in half, for Windows2000 and WindowsMe?

Converting a FAT32 drive to NTFS isn't really a huge problem - it's done fairly often, in fact. It might be a good idea to back everything up JUST IN CASE of a weird circumstance. But it's usually pretty reliable. However, not all of the indexing/security features will be available for the drive that would be available for a drive freshly formatted as NTFS.

[twstokes]

Well, I really don't care about Windows ME, no they aren't partitioned apart. I don't even think ME would run on NTFS would it?

I just want to do two things if possible:

1. Keep my current Windows 2000, registry, programs
2. Convert to NTFS

It's extremely time consuming getting EVERY program back, EVERY update, etc., especially with my screamin' 56K.

Maybe I should just do this:

1. Copy everything to my failing drive (risky, but it's been doing this for quite some time so what's one more day?)

2. Format 60GB, set to master, installed W2K with NTFS, copy everything over from failing slave 30GB.

How does that sound to you?

T.W. Stokes

[Dani]

That seems like it would work. I would convert to NTFS last.

[TallCool1]

I'm currently running Windows 2000 on my master C: drive 30GB, dual booting with Windows ME. Running slave is my new 60GB HD, with ALL of my media files, important files, etc. C:\ has been throwing me warning signs for a while now, and I don't want to risk it possibly failing on me. I simply want to just put everything on my slave, W2K, media, EVERYTHING.

Also, I want to convert this slave to NTFS.

Here's what I would do. It is similar to what I did recently. Start by downloading Knoppix from http://www.Knoppix.com -- actually, this links to several FTP sites.

Once you have a working CD, you can start the backup process. Start by defragging the slave drive (how full is it?). Once this is done, you can use QTPartEd to create a second partition on the drive. You will have to format the new partition. Once that's done, open a shell and type in sudo partimage. The compressed drive image from C: can now be backed up to the new partition; the filename is in the form /mnt/hdax/<filename>, and the file(s) can be set to be CD-size chunks.

There is an XP utility to change a FAT32 filesystem to NTFS after you restore stuff as you like.

[twstokes]

Thanks a lot for the reply, I really appreciate it.

This is the road I chose to take:

I have: A. 30 GB HD (extra) B. 30 GB HD (master) C. 60GB HD (slave)

1. Copy all info I want to save to HD A, already converted to NTFS (I ended up taking up 24.7 GB of nothing but downloaded files, music, etc.)

2. Totally remove HD A from system

3. Totally remove HD B from system

4. Change HD C jumpers to master, format to NTFS

5. Install Win2K to HD C

6. Install HD A as slave, copy entire drive (24.7 GB) to HD C

7. Remove HD A

What this leaves me with: 60GB NTFS Drive, WIN2K, all my saved files (24.7 GB worth), and hopefully more reliability.

It might sound confusing, and time consuming, but I find it pretty safe and reliable.

Thanks again for the help guys!

T.W. Stokes