Hard Drive Question

[SMiles]

Hey guys, I have some questions about formatting/partitioning hard drives. Here's my situation:

When I first bought my computer I bought it with two 74gb 10,000rpm raptor hard drives in Raid0 configuration. Right around this time last year, I had both of those filled to where I couldn't even defragment anymore. So at that point I decided to buy a 750gb seagate and use that to store all of my music/pictures/documents. That solved the problem for about a year, but now I am back up again to where I cant even defragment again.

So today I was thinking and I came up with an idea. My idea was to create a new partition on the 750gb drive and make an exact copy of the 150gb raid drive onto the new partition. Then I would format the 150gb raid drive and boot up off of the new partition. That way I could install all of the programs that are read/write intensive onto the raid drive because of the 10,000rpm, and have everything else on a partition of the big 750gb drive.

I am not very experienced when it comes to raid configurations and what not so any insight you guys have will be really helpful. Thanks!

 

[Hyperion*1400]

Well, odds are, the only way to make the new partition will be to format you 750Gb. Once a partition has been made, there is no way to change its size, and I am guessing you dedicated the whole of the available space on the 750 to one partition. So, you may be SOL.

 

[mrcool]

Hey guys, I have some questions about formatting/partitioning hard drives. Here's my situation:

When I first bought my computer I bought it with two 74gb 10,000rpm raptor hard drives in Raid0 configuration. Right around this time last year, I had both of those filled to where I couldn't even defragment anymore. So at that point I decided to buy a 750gb seagate and use that to store all of my music/pictures/documents. That solved the problem for about a year, but now I am back up again to where I cant even defragment again.

So today I was thinking and I came up with an idea. My idea was to create a new partition on the 750gb drive and make an exact copy of the 150gb raid drive onto the new partition. Then I would format the 150gb raid drive and boot up off of the new partition. That way I could install all of the programs that are read/write intensive onto the raid drive because of the 10,000rpm, and have everything else on a partition of the big 750gb drive.

I am not very experienced when it comes to raid configurations and what not so any insight you guys have will be really helpful. Thanks!

Ok, confusing. So your 2x74gb drives are full but you have room on the 750gb? And you want to copy your 2x74 GB drives to your 750gb, boot off the 750gb, and install only some programs on the 2x74? You'll need to clear 150GB off the front of the drive which might take a while. See below.

Well, odds are, the only way to make the new partition will be to format you 750Gb. Once a partition has been made, there is no way to change its size, and I am guessing you dedicated the whole of the available space on the 750 to one partition. So, you may be SOL.

Incorrect. Windows won't let your resize partitions, but plenty of 3rd party programs will. Here's one. It's free for 32bit OS's. If you have 64 bit, you'll have to find something else...

 

[LightHunter]

Well, just make sure you back up all your important stuff before you start messing with partitions and formatting as my laptop has has trouble with that stuff before and the result was an empty hard drive! And wow you've got so many docs!

 

[Lance]

Probably not much help, but as another example, I lost all the stuff on our old desktop computer once because I didn't back it up before trying to partition. Don't be like me and LightHunter, kids!

 

[mrcool]

I've moved/resized partitions probably 20x and lost some (not all) stuff 1 of those times. I didn't have a choice, I had nowhere to backup to.

 

[jaxory]

Incorrect. Windows won't let your resize partitions, but plenty of 3rd party programs will. Here's one. It's free for 32bit OS's. If you have 64 bit, you'll have to find something else...

While there is nothing wrong with third party tools, Windows does actually allow you to change partitions. To do so:

- Start Menu -> Run (Windows Key+R)
- Type "compmgmt.msc" without the quotes (This is known as "Computer Management" under the Administrative Tools if you know where that is)
- Choose the Disk Management on the tree to the left side (under Disk Storage)
- Right Clicking on whichever volume/partition you wish to edit will bring up some options for it (Change Drive Letter, Shrink Volume, Expand Volume, Delete Volume, Formatting, etc)

 

[SMiles]

Well, odds are, the only way to make the new partition will be to format you 750Gb. Once a partition has been made, there is no way to change its size, and I am guessing you dedicated the whole of the available space on the 750 to one partition. So, you may be SOL.

Yes, I realize this, right now we are only using about 66Gb's on the 750 so my plan is to put all of that on an external until I am done formatting/partitioning the 750. My main question though is:

If I just straight up copy everything into the new partition, will windows and everything still work? I am assuming I will have to change the Letter of the new partition to the same letter as the 2x74 so the registry and what not won't be confused, but is there anything else besides that, that I am overlooking?


btw, Thanks for all the help everyone!! I thought this thread had died...then I checked on it, and realized I had new posts!!

 

[trykael]

SMiles -

If I read your most recent post correctly, it looks like you want to copy your windows drive to a partition on another drive and then try to boot off of that new partition. Unfortunately that won't work very easily - Windows' registry doesn't work that way. After you copy everything over you'd still need to INSTALL windows onto that partition. You can MAKE it work, but it's dirty and doesn't work very well...

The easiest way to do this honestly is to just make a list of the programs you want to reinstall down the road, backup all of your personal files (documents, settings, STEAM folder, etc) over to the 750gig drive, then format and install Windows onto your RAID setup. It sounds like this is what you want to do in the long run anyway, so I'm not really sure why you'd want to "copy" Windows to another partition and try to run off of that partition.

 

[blizbiggy]

You could always buy a 2TB HDD
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136344

 

[mrcool]

While there is nothing wrong with third party tools, Windows does actually allow you to change partitions. To do so:

Yes, sorry, you are right. XP and before did not let you resize partitions. I had heard that Vista/7 do let you, but I don't run Vista so that wasn't fresh on my mind.

 

[SMiles]

SMiles -

If I read your most recent post correctly, it looks like you want to copy your windows drive to a partition on another drive and then try to boot off of that new partition. Unfortunately that won't work very easily - Windows' registry doesn't work that way. After you copy everything over you'd still need to INSTALL windows onto that partition. You can MAKE it work, but it's dirty and doesn't work very well...

The easiest way to do this honestly is to just make a list of the programs you want to reinstall down the road, backup all of your personal files (documents, settings, STEAM folder, etc) over to the 750gig drive, then format and install Windows onto your RAID setup. It sounds like this is what you want to do in the long run anyway, so I'm not really sure why you'd want to "copy" Windows to another partition and try to run off of that partition.

Windows is currently installed on the raid setup. Right now I have anything that can be on the 750 over on the 750 (docs, music, pretty much everything except for the programs themselves). The problem is we only have 15Gb left on the 150Gb raid setup. SO my crazy idea was to back up everything currently on the 750 (docs/music/othercrap) onto an external hard drive, then format the 750, then do an EXACT copy of the raid setup onto the 750, format the 150, then switch the letters hoping this would trick windows into thinking that the 750 was the drive it was originally installed on. I would most likely do all this using a bootable CD.

This would then free up the 150 raid setup for steam and any other programs that I deem worthy to be on the 10,000RPM raid setup.

Sorry for the confusiuon....
Thanks again for all the help!

 

[_Xx_HeX_xX_]

this wont work , i gaurunteee , the bootloader will be jacked and you will have no windows , reinstall !