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  1. I have an internal 40g hard drive but it is too small to use for capturing and I have an 120g external hard drive that I was hoping to use for capturing and editing video but it has given me problems when capturing.
    After many times trying to capture video from my mini dv camcorder I have found that it seems to be the external case that my hard drive is in. When I capture to my internal hard drive its great but can't capture too much because of space. So here's my question, I would like to swap my hard drives, take the external out of the case an install it to be my internal drive and take the smaller drive and put it in the case and use it to store data instead. My question is do I have to redo the hard drives all over again with all the info or is there a way to swap info from one hard drive to another? The internal drive right now has my operating system which is Windows XP on it among other things and the bigger hard drive(external) has all my video tools and basically things used for video capturing and editng. HELP PLEASE!
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  2. Member
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    You have answered your own question. NO!, you can not just swap the too drives around. The motherboards bios cannot read a USB device as the boot drive. You would have to reformat and re-install windows on the larger drive you swap. I have found this to be the best approach. However there are a few programs that can make the swap possible by copying an exact image of one drive to the other. I personally use the first solution. Good luck!
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  3. So if I reformat the drives what is on them will automaticlly be deleted and I can start from new?
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    Essentially yes, but first do you know how to do a re-install of Windows XP on the new harddrive you swap in?
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  5. I've never done a reinstall of Windows XP, any suggestions would be appreciated.
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  6. Can't you just install the external drive as a second internal drive? That would seem to be the easiest solution.

    If you feel comfortable working with disk utilities, try BootItNG from www.terabyteunlimited. While meant as a boot manager, you can also use it to image your hard drive or partition for quick restores in the event of problems. It will also allow you to copy your XP installation from the small driv e to the big one. This might require an XP re-registration with Microsoft, though. If you want to try BootItNG, just download the trial and install it to a boot floppy or make a bootable CD. Boot using your new boot media and install BootItNG, or enter the maintenance section and copy the drive data as desired. You probably need to repartition your bigger drive to save the files you currently have on it. Good Luck.
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  7. Member The village idiot's Avatar
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    There is software available that can help you transfer the files from the old drive, to the new drive. Drive image from Powerquest is one. Ghost is another.

    If you are going to have to buy software, then think about this....

    You could buy a firewire case for your hard drive, and then it should work the way you want. Then you wouldn't have to mess around with reloading your system software. Reloading the system is something you should learn to do, but when it is your only computer, the down time while you make mistakes can be frustrating.

    If the firewire case did not work, you could bring it back for a refund that same day. Just my thoughts on things. If you do decide to put the larger drive in the computer, then do not change anything on the smaller drive until you have a working system! Then if you get stuck, you can remove the large drive, put the small drive back in, and still have a working computer.

    Also how many things do you have in your computr. IDE can have 4 devices. So if you have 1 hard drive, 1 CD/DVD-rom and one CD/DVD burner, then you still have 1 open connection. You could just put the larger drive into your computer, and not have to mess with reloading the system.
    Hope is the trap the world sets for you every night when you go to sleep and the only reason you have to get up in the morning is the hope that this day, things will get better... But they never do, do they?
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  8. Here's another thought, how about just remapping the drives, that should definitely be possible. I mean thats why the software was invented, right. I recommend PowerQuest Partition Magic to remap your drives,use the wizard, it will guide you step by step, even with what needs to be done with your boot sector. Should be no problem, just make sure your system is stable or you may come into problems. Also if for some reason it did not work, there is a recover process too, so you can go back to how it was before the remapping, if I remember correctly.
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    I vote with Village, here.

    If you had filled out your Computer details, we might know if you have a HDD, a DVD-ROM, a DVD Burner, and a CD-R, thus 4 devices, you need an ATA card to put in a 5th device.

    If you, in fact, have only 3 devices, by all means install the 120 as an internal. Do you need it to be portable, between 2 machines? If not, you would have wasted the price of the enclosure, but be ahead of the game, performance-wise.

    If you can do this, come back and ask what is the best configuration. I'm sure you will get more help than you can keep up with.
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  10. I have a dvd writer,dvd rom and 1 internal hard drive. There is no room in the case to put anything else.
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    Yep
    I also go along with The village idiot & gmatov
    Just add the drive as a slave on the main drives cable.
    You say there is no room inside ? you either have an awful small case or there should be room to mount a second H.D. somewhere ?
    Don't add it as the master and go through reinstalling everything, i run a 20gig as my master and replaced my slave 40gig with an 80gig, more than enough to hold quite a few dvd's of video
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  12. Member tlegion's Avatar
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    Suggestions:

    1. If you have USB 2.0, go to Newegg.com and order an external enclosure for $40. Move the 120GB drive into it.
    2. For the time being, replace the DVD-ROM with the 120GB.
    3. Buy a larger case for $40. (this, of course, does not work with a major name brand computer such as dell, hp compaq, ibm, gateway, apple)
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    Originally Posted by nanz1
    I have a dvd writer,dvd rom and 1 internal hard drive. There is no room in the case to put anything else.
    If there is no room, Norton Ghost will be best for you if you cannot put in the 120G as a slave.

    If you are not familiar with Ghost, you will creat a boot floppy disk from Ghost and create a Ghost image of your hard drive to CDR or CDRW. You should back up all data files and delete the data file so that you have a smaller hard disk system (Windows, Program files etc.) image to back up in ghost (say 2G in about 10 minutes) and fast restoring system image to your new 120G (in about 10 minutes).
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  14. Yes, I Know Roundabout's Avatar
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    40 GB is a lot of space on your internal C: drive What do you have on it that's taking up all your space? Have you thought about just moving some of the data (maybe you have a lot of mp3's or photos on it?) to the external drive to free up space, and still capturing your DV data to the internal C: drive? Then transfer the captured data after working with it, to your external drive, to store it. 40 GB (or even 10 GB) should be more than enough space to work with anything you might capture from your DV camcorder. Then you wouldn't have to do anything with your current configuration.
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  15. Member The village idiot's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by tlegion
    Suggestions:

    1. If you have USB 2.0, go to Newegg.com and order an external enclosure for $40. Move the 120GB drive into it.
    2. For the time being, replace the DVD-ROM with the 120GB.
    3. Buy a larger case for $40. (this, of course, does not work with a major name brand computer such as dell, hp compaq, ibm, gateway, apple)
    Unfortunately, he forgot to say that he has the 120G drive in a USB2 enclosure. It doesn't work with his DV camera. For some reason it drops frames when transfering from the camera to the USB2 drive. So #1 won't work.

    If the case you are using is something small like an Emachines, there probably isn't room inside for a second hard drive. You could take out the DVD-ROM, and put it in an external case.
    Hope is the trap the world sets for you every night when you go to sleep and the only reason you have to get up in the morning is the hope that this day, things will get better... But they never do, do they?
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  16. My vote goes to Roundabout.

    - Move some stuff to the external drive (to make space).
    - Capture on the internal drive.
    - Move the avi s to the external drive for for editing/processing


    Should cost $0 and very little time.
    I mean it in the nicest way.
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    I think he needs to give more details, i use a 20gig for my master drive but it's also partitioned, i only use 4gigs for my XP os.
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  18. Thanks everyone for responding to my problem. I was able to fix it by taking out my dvd rom and putting that in the external case and moving the 120g hard drive to the main case and everything seems to be working fine. I don't know much about computers but sure am learning alot from the people here. I have another question, do the hard drives need to have a fan on them to keep them cool?
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  19. Member The village idiot's Avatar
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    Normally no. But it doesn't hurt.
    Hope is the trap the world sets for you every night when you go to sleep and the only reason you have to get up in the morning is the hope that this day, things will get better... But they never do, do they?
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  20. Two additional things I find helps, partition the drives so that the OS + prograns are held on seperate partition to everything else. And back up this partition (hopefully less than 2gb) goes to 3 cdr or 1 dvdr.
    ghost is good as is partition manager 7/8. Or backup your os to a seperate HIDDEN partition on your hd for quick and easy recovery from virii trojans worms and other program bugs. partition manager program will do this.
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