First there are several partition managers, and hard drive management
facilities available free via the web, or on the DVDs that come with popular
computer magazines
Secondly, yes - create a dos partition first, then clone the '2K' OS
partition, ensure that the 2K is working, and that the new drive will work
as a replacement for your current OS drive.
That way you should end up with a 30Gb partition for your OS on the new
drive, and lots of space for the data
You will have proved the OS by switching the drives, so your system should
then be the 200Gb, and the 120GB drives
with the OS partition being FAT, it will be limited to 2GB files on that
partition
decide now if you wish to convert that partition to NTFS in order to handle
larger files such as DVD ISO's on that partition, and possibly make the
partition larger to have more space on it
.
Then you can either 'clone' the partitions from the 120 to the 200 gb drive
as they are, either direct copy drive to drive as images, or as filesets
images is where you copy each sector/track/cylinder regardless of their use
or file content - like a photocopy
you can also do that using a backup image created from the original
partition and then use that backup image to 'restore' the partition to a
space on the new drive
The image process doesn't look at the directories or individual files so you
can copy a partition with errors in the file allocations
and the new partition must have at least as space on the drive as the old
one
Another mode is copy the partition but as a set of files - that requires
that the entire partition be correctly structures - files, directories
freespace FAT/MFT tables - that's what chkdsk is for
that process copies the entire set of files as individual files effectively
doing a defrag as it copies
The third process is to use windows explorer (as an administrator) and drag
the files from 1 partition to another.
as that is working within windows the file access control and other
protections apply - so you can't copy files that are open, or that the
system says the operating/active userid is not allowed to access.
( that's why it won't work for the OS partition,or a partition with your
user profile files on it)
You should ( in my opinion) copy the partitions as images, then run chkdsk,
and possibly defrag on the resulting partition anyhow
running chkdsk on the source will 'correct' any problems it finds on the
source, but doing it on the copy means you have a chance at getting at any
data that a chkdsk 'correction' may have deleted
The LBA bit is an OS fix so, if needed, you will have to run the appropriate
version of it on any OS that does not 'see (computer properties manage
manage storage) the full size of the drive.
Note the warnings about a BIOS, and/or OS that does not support LBA, and the
problems if you remove the fix..
now what about DOS7/ Win98
Practically, I have found that when using applications/OS's that do not
support the LBA, providing I do not alter any partition information that
refers past the 137Gb limit then the partitions extending above that are not
corrupted.
e.g. with drive(s) larger than 137Gb, copying a partition that does not
extend past the 137Gb limit to a location on the same, or another drive
where the resulting partition is not beyond the limit, or does not cause an
alteration to an existing partition definition (including extended, and
freespace) does not corrupt the LBA dependant entries - but that's only my
experience using my limited set of software.
Don't forget
primary + extended partitions + freespace outside the extended partition
should not be more than 4 areas
only have 1 active partition per drive
that active partition should contain the boot.ini and/or boot manager
fixmbr
before copying the OS partition ensure that it is using a temporary pagefile
check that the resulting OS does not think its profile entries, pagefile etc
are on the old partition.
Oh! and if you are going to be running multiple OS instances set your email
to not delete the mail from the server
JimB
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mike Miller" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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