The deed is done. The 1 Tb hard drive has replaced the original 100 gig SATA, the manual cloning was easy and got me exactly what I wanted. I did not need to do anything about SATA drivers (the system was using a SATA drive when I got it). No job like this can be done without a few Stupid Mistakes--at least when I do it.<g> This is a 3 Gb/s drive and my system is limited to 1.5 Gb/s, so I had to use a jumper to make it compatible. (Seagate didn't include a jumper, by the way, and it's a retail drive with cables, manual, software, etc., so I had to go to my extensive collection of drive screws and jumpers to find one that fit in the tight space.) I carefully noted where the jumper had to go. When I tried to start the clone with DiskWizard, I got a message that there was only one drive in the system and you need two in order to clone it. Hmmmm. First I checked the BIOS and the drive was listed. However, Windows didn't see it and DiskWizard wouldn't clone it. So I painstakingly inspected my connections and then noticed that I had the jumper over the wrong pins! And I'd been SO CAREFUL to get it right. I changed the jumper and this time DiskWizard happily took me into the clone utility. It took me about 30 seconds to figure out how to set up my custom partitions and volumes but it was as Dale says--all the partitions/volumes on the drive being cloned are listed on the clonee, with sizes proportionally increased to fill the new drive. The user can then adjust the sizes as desired, which I did. When you're ready to go, DiskWizard reboots the computer and restarts DiskWizard to do the deed.It was all automatic and all I had to do was wait. I had a nearly impossible time removing the plastic SATA connector from the old drive. It just would not come off. I wonder if the connection melts a little over time and sort of welds itself onto the motherboard and drive connectors. I moved the old drive out of the bay and outside the computer to get a better look and grip on the SATA cable connector but to no avail. Finally my husband was able to yank it off the drive and amazingly, nothing was damaged. I gave up on removing the cable from the motherboard and just attached the other end to the drive. The new connectors were much easier to attach and remove from the new drive before I put it in the bay where the old drive was. I had about 470 gigs unallocated on the new drive, in which I intend to make a volume for Win 7 when my copy arrives in October. However, I noticed that the clone did not make the extended partition fill all the remaining space after the volumes were cloned. So I ran my trusty Partition Commander and enlarged the extended partition to fill the rest of the drive. Took about five seconds! Then with Partition Commander I made a 170-gig volume (Drive H) and had it format the volume as FAT32. I use it for music and some video files I share with Linux. XP itself, of course, will not format FAT32 larger than 32 gigs, as far as I know. But Partition Commander did it happily and very quickly (probably uses Quick Format, as Dale recommends). I then restarted XP and moved about 100 gigs of stuff from the former Drive H on the PATA hard drive to the new Drive H on the new drive. I have one remaining NTFS volume on the PATA drive whose data needs to be moved to various volumes on the new SATA drive. Then I'll use that 500-gig PATA drive entirely for Linux. So that's how it went. Once I got the jumper right, it was a very easy, very smooth job. Oh, by the way--Windows did not ask me to reactivate. I didn't expect it to, but you never know. I've done TONS of upgrades to XP computers and have never been asked to reactivate.
--Judy M.
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Registered Linux User #397786
Being productive with VectorLinux 6.0 Standard version, Deluxe Edition
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