Thread: HDD Swap - What would you do?

take the advice from pedro, then ignore everything he suggests buying and buy anything else! you know you wont have problems then!

My 2 cents would be buy a new one... and if its possible with vista.. ghost it over.. saves reinstalling and im assuming the install is fairly new being vista.. unless its an XP upgrade then reinstall from fresh..

why is your htpc temperamental? mines on 24/7 for weeks! oh you said you MCE didnt you

personally i'd stick with my hitachi's but they seem very hard to find over here.. good job i have several spares..

Thanks

Steve

Originally Posted by 5teve

why is your htpc temperamental? mines on 24/7 for weeks! oh you said you MCE didnt you

It's fine as long as I don't touch it. I tried to upgrade to Vista 6 months ago and had all kinds of trouble with video and tuner drivers. Finally went back to MCE in disgust and its stable as is. Just have to be careful with MS software updates.

Cheers.

What 5teve said.

Get a bigger drive and clone all the OS, apps, data, etc. onto it. Ghost is good and there are other apps you can use. Dump the 40 and use the 250 for back up of your home directory stuff, or the OS if you prefer.

I bought a 500Gb sata drive for $180 a couple of weeks ago. Cheap as.

Hell, at that price go the whole hog and get two drives and set them up as a RAID

Edit: Oh by the way. Didn't vote because none of the options matched the suggestion of cloning onto a new and larger drive.

If you're running a 40gig hard drive in a desk top then how old is the machine? Obviously good enough to run Vista but it sounds like it is time to upgrade the lot.

Regardless of the age of the rest of the system the 40gig drive must be nearing the age of imminent failure especially if it is a cheapy. Although my wifes 20gig in her desktop is still going but it is rarely used.

Originally Posted by Utemad

If you're running a 40gig hard drive in a desk top then how old is the machine? Obviously good enough to run Vista but it sounds like it is time to upgrade the lot.

Regardless of the age of the rest of the system the 40gig drive must be nearing the age of imminent failure especially if it is a cheapy. Although my wifes 20gig in her desktop is still going but it is rarely used.

The box itself is 10yo but has been constantly upgraded. Near new MB with a gig of RAM, DVD drive, cordless mouse/KB, lovely Asus 21" flatscreen.

As all I use it for is email, MS Office and the net, 40GB's been fine but the kids don't like giving me access to their (much better) PC to transfer vid from the DV camera, and there just isn't the spare space on the 40GB to do movies.

I don't have Ghost so I think I'll just pony up for a 250GB drive and reinstall from scratch.

Cheers.

PS...If you think the 40GB is old hat then you'd hate my 2nd drive, the original 4GB that came with the PC. Works a treat.

FYI I run an automated backup to the data drive of my HTPC (all 3 PCs are networked) every few days, just in case....

Format the lot and install only Linux.

It's done, finally. I didn't count but I reckon its taken 10 hours.

Only time will tell if I've managed to resurrect SWMBO's files, programs, links, Facebook, Yahoo chat thingy, etc, etc.

Sadly the one bonus I was hoping for from this was that Movie Maker would recognize (and not lock up whn connecting to) my Sony DV camera. No such luck.