installing a new hard drive

[five.five-six]

I am finaly replacing my old SCSI drives, I have been running them for 10 years and the controller is crapping out on me. they have been partitianed into 9 drives over the years and have several programs installed on them

the plan was to back them all up to an external, then partition my new 1TB drive into similar drives and with the same drive letters and everything should work... right? wrong

unfortunatly I can only put 4 partitions on the new drive. how can I go about getting my system up and running right again?

[ocabj]

4 primary partitions max.

So make one of the partitions extended, and then make logical partitions within.

[L4D]

Why do you need partitions on a single drive? I don't see the need for it unless your booting different OS'

[MaHoTex]

1TB on a single partition could become a nightmare to manage the data. Do you NEED it, no. Makes life easier? For me it does.


The the OP, Get a copy of Acronis True Image and you can simply copy the old drive info over and it will auto expand "As is" onto the new drive. You will be up and running with a new drive in minutes.

[five.five-six]

4 primary partitions max.

So make one of the partitions extended, and then make logical partitions within.

ok, so can I make 3 primary partitions with 2-3 extended partitions within each one?

[loose_electron]

Why partition the drive at all? Break up the HDD's directory structure into a hierarchy that you can work with easily.

If you really want it, name the sudirectories "driveC" "driveD" if it will make you feel better!

[five.five-six]

Because I don't want to re install everything , I would rather just restore it

[MaHoTex]

556, As I mentioned in my previous post. You really should take a look at True Image. It will put everything back EXACTLY like it was and then expand your partitions with the "extra" space on the drive. The software is $50 from the Acronis website.

It is called "Acronis True Image Home 2011"

[five.five-six]

ohh was on my android, I missed your "true image" post, sounds like that's the ticket for me

[chiefcrash]

I think if your new drive is a Western Digital, you can download a lightweight free version of Acronis from the Western Digital website...

[five.five-six]

I think if your new drive is a Western Digital, you can download a lightweight free version of Acronis from the Western Digital website...

that would be nice, it was a:

WD Caviar Green 1TB 64MB/SATA-3G


$59.95 shipped on eBay from Member id tigerdirect


dang, that's a lot of storage, I should be GTG for a while, my OS and swap files run on a intel SSD 40 gig

[five.five-six]

556, As I mentioned in my previous post. You really should take a look at True Image. It will put everything back EXACTLY like it was and then expand your partitions with the "extra" space on the drive. The software is $50 from the Acronis website.

It is called "Acronis True Image Home 2011"

so, i used the free WD version and it worked well, however it would only allow me to clone from one physical drive to another physical drive, it would not let me clone 3 small physical drives on to one TB drive, will the full version let me do that

[MaHoTex]

Yes. I think you have to partition the new 1TB drive first though. Then you expand the 3 physical drives into the newly created partition. You have to do them one at a time, not as a group though.

[five.five-six]

even when partisioned, the version I have, still views them as 1 drive

[MaHoTex]

I bet you probably need the full version of Acronis.