How To Transfer Data to new Hard Drive

Hi Guys

My set up is now C drive and a physical D drive (80 meg) which stores my main data (mp3's, videos etc).

My D drive is now getting nearly full and I have bought a new 160 gig drive which I want to install as my new D Drive.

What would be the easiest way to tranfer my data to the new drive ?

Can I install it as an E drive and have 3 drives in the machine (temporarily) while I copy the files across ?

My C and D drives are on my IDE connectors, and my mother board has 2 SATA connections.

Or do I need annother machine to do this and use some sort of cable or do I have to use CD's ?

Thanks

Regards

Digby
NZ

Quote:

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Originally Posted by digmen1

Can I install it as an E drive and have 3 drives in the machine (temporarily) while I copy the files across ?

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Yup. Just drag and drop.

Drag and drop will work fine, have done it a bunch of times my self.

Thanks guys,

I am more concerned as to whether I can have 3 hard drives in my machine, I realise that if I can get them going it will be easy to copy the files.

Regards

Digby

Is your new drive SATA?

You can have two IDE devices on each cable. You probably have one or two optical drives as well.

It usually dosn't hurt to temporarily unplug an optical drive to connect the new drive while you prepare it.

Obvioulsy only change the cables around with the power unplugged, touch the metal case before touching anything inside to equalise any static electricty, you may have to set the master/slave jumper on the new drive etc.

You do realize that once you transfer the data from the 80gig (almost full) to the 160 you will end up with 80gig space again. It would be a good idea to transfer at least some of the videos and mp3's you don't use very often to dvd or cd to clean up the drive and make some room before the transfer, This will not only give you more room on the new drive but will save some of your data in a form that can't crash on you. When it comes time to transfer I usually unplug the cable from my rom drives and then I can hook up the new drive outside the case (temporarily for the transfer), copy the files from D to E and install and check the drive before formatting the old D drive out (again on the outside). If your new drive is sata then your all set as long as you have a bay to put the drive in you can run three and leave D alone as storage. Maxtor drives come with a disk that will tranfer data for you, consider that when you buy your next drive.

Thanks Zaphodiv and Appzalein (you sound like brothers), great replies and they have made me decide what to do. Now I can easily install my Sata drive as E and copy the files over and then remove my old D and make my Sata my new D !

I do backup up all of my files to CDRW's but I like to keep them all on one drive for easy access. Thats why I bought a 160 meg. I suppose a 400 gig will be next ! By the time I need one they will be "affordable". Isn't technology great ! (Or is it just China ?)

PS I Used to sell PC's in the mid 80's when hard drives were just becoming popular and a firm of lawyers in town bought an IBM PC with a 20 meg hard drive and all of us dealers and sales reps knew about it ! That is enough to store 4 songs now !

Regards

Digby

Kind Regards

Digby

I would suggset that you install your new SATA drive as C: It might be faster. Check the specs or post the model numbers.