Hard Drive Delema

[spikoman69]

I Have a dell pc, with a 40gb HDD, i only have 1 HDD slot which has this hard drive in it right now. I want to be able to keep this harddrive in there and run windows an all i have off it now. But i am running out of storage and need more room, but i do no want to put in a bigger hard drive and have to lose all i have.
I have been told you can install programs on an external USB harddrive, so i guess those are out of the question.

What kind of harddrive can i get to meet these needs, be able to have programs installed on them, and run just as well as a normal harddrive? this will be used to run games, so it needs to be able to transfer data fast enough for games such as doom 3 and HL2.

 

[spikoman69]

I have a low end mp3 player, that acts as just a USB harddrive, and i installed several smaller programs onto it and played it off it, tommorow, i will try installing a decent size game onto it, and seeing if it wil run off it. The only thing is, i cant test how good it would be with an external harddrive because the processor on this mp3 player is slower then mollases.

 

[Trotter]

You can get another hard drive, hook it up (ATA and power from your optical drive, and just set it somewhere so it doesn't fall). Use Ghost to copy your hard drive onto the new drive. Swap the new drive for the old drive. And there ya go.

 

[spikoman69]

is ghost a free program? i take it its not, but if i took it into say computer builders warehouse, or like the geek squad at best buy, would they be glad to help me through this process so i wont make any mistakes and lose all my files im trying to save, and is this ghost program like 100% error free were it wont say corrupt or mess up when copying all my junk?

 

[Trotter]

Ghost isn't free. But it is worth every dime.

It copies your entire disk including the Master Boot Record. Without the MBR, you just have a backup. With the MBR, you can swap it for the original and keep going. I used it to replace the 40 gig drive in my old computer with a 160.

 

[spikoman69]

so if i bought say a 100gb HDD, and took it somewhere, would they be able to do this for me?

 

[Trotter]

Yeah. Almost any computer shop would have Ghost and could do it for you.

 

[an51r]

you can download the trial version to use to ghost this one time, i am going through the same basic scenario and it so far has worked

 

[spikoman69]

so, i will have to disconnect my cd rom drive, then use its ide connector, and power supply connecter, then have it detected and working on my pc, then use the ghost program and get everything on it, then put my cd rom back in, then put the drive i ghosted everything onto inplace of my old drive, then it will load up correctly? or will i have to do anything with booting options in the boot menu?