My Dilemma

[Green Radience]

Ok, so here's the situation;

I have a 80GB Seagate Barracuda Ultra ATA 133 HDD that I'm using right now. Said Hard Drive has been formatted so 40GB are used as Linux, and the rest of the 35GB are what I run Windows on. The story behind this stupid formatting is too long to tell, so I'll skip that.

Thats the background. Now for the real stuff. I have a 160GB Maxtor DiamondMax9 SATA150 HDD waiting. Its literally sitting in my case right now, it just isn't plugged in.

What I want to do; I want to install the 160GB Maxtor into my system right now, transfer all the data from the 35GB UltraATA Seagate to the 160GB SATA150 Maxtor (including Windows OS), then disconnect and re-format the Seagate to use in another computer and use the Maxtor as the main HD.

For one, are there going to be any problems with the UltraATA+SATA combination? Also, I don't have any idea how to actually transfer all the stuff over. I suppose I could just copy Drive C to Drive D, but would that also transfer over Windows? And third; I've heard of problems when there are 2 versions of Windows installed on 2 Hard Drives, will I be looking at something like that here?

I've put this off for far too long. Thanks in advance for any help you guys can give.

 

[Osiris]

What you need is to get Acronis or any other similiar program to perform a disk clone from the old hdd to the new hdd. Running 2 different types of hdds will be fine just as long as your mobo supports it. I use ide and sata as sata being my main drive.

 

[Green Radience]

Thanks for the reply Warez. I just remembered something else I wanted to do, can you help with this one;

Simply take out the 35GB Barracuda, install the 160GB Maxtor. I forgot to mention; I have Windows 2000 on the 35GB Barracuda. I want to install XP on the 160GB Maxtor, and then, after plugging the 35GB back in, transfer the files from the Barracuda onto the Maxtor. Any problems with that? Any tips on how to do it?

 

[Osiris]

You can do that but do you know if its fat32 or ntfs?

 

[Green Radience]

NTFS.

You're crazy fast with the speed of your replies, btw, lol.

 

[Osiris]

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;308421

look at the site

 

[Green Radience]

I'm assuming that when I'm on WinXP, I won't be the "owner" of the files on Win2K? And without being the owner, I can't transfer the files? So that will let me transfer the files from the Win2K drive to the WinXP drive?

I'm just making assumptions here.

 

[Osiris]

Im not 100% for sure as I have never ran into this issue, all I can say right now is give it a try since you wont loose anything

 

[Green Radience]

Thanks for all your help. Yea, this is all pretty much uncharted territory, haha.

 

[Osiris]

This is how ya learn.