Basic questions on an upgrade

[johnk]

I have a Dell computer that I inherited from a developer a while ago.

Although not new it seems quite capable: Dimension 9150, 2.9 mhz Pentium D, 2 G RAM. It also has two hard drives: a 40GB drive which serves as the C:, and a >100 G drive which is labeled F:. Running the XP OS.

The 40GB C: drive is nearly full, and I want to make the switch before I am forced to.

I'm not afraid of doing this sort of thing, but I work for myself and a timely transfer is crucial to making a living. Of course I back up my documents, and before I undertake this I will back up the entire C: drive.

I looked at the hard drive upgrade.com web site, and it's pretty clear, although it assumes the upgrade drive is coming out of the box, rather than one that is installed as mine is. Is there a similar set of instructions for that situation? Should I return the second drive to its clean state, and if so how?

If I do chicken out and decide to take it to Al downtown, what should I expect to pay for this service? Or is this the sort of thing not to trust someone with?

Thanks
JK

[IceHot]

I am kind of new at the whole building computers type idea. However, swapping out a hard drive and or changing them is pretty easy. I am a little unclear as to exactly what you want to do? Right now the way you have it set up is, you have the C: drive as the primary hard drive and the F drive set up as a slave drive. It seems like you are trying to switch the F drive and C drive around. If that's what you are trying to do then why? Even though the 40GB drive is full and the 100GB drive is not. Why not just start saving to the F drive when you need to save files? If you are just trying to switch these two hard drives around there is no need too. If I made a mistake in reading your post and this does not answer your question please write back and i'll be glad to write a better explanation of how to do it. However, paying someone to do that..not sure what it would cost. But you can do it about an hours time. I imagine the service fee and labor cost of something like that would be around 100 dollars. Really now worth the money. Its a very simple process.

[johnk]

Thanks for your note. The problem is that the C: drive is only 40GB, and taking off my documents only frees up a little space (5GB). I've only got 2 GB free at the moment, and the system seems to fill itself up quickly, in spite of my cleaning things up regularly.

So I'm going to have to do it someday.

JK

[IceHot]

Okay, I am still a little confused on what exactly you are trying to do. So, you have one computer with a 40GB hard drive? And another computer with a 100GB hard drive? And your trying to replace the 40GB with the 100GB OR you have a computer that has the 100GB and the 40GB installed on it and you just wanna switch the 100GB to the primary boot drive? I apologize I just want to completely understand what you are trying to do before I give you some instructions on what to do and have it get messed up. A clarification just so I dont mess up when explaing it would be awesome. Either way what you are trying to do is still very simple. Sorry about the confusion.
Thanks
-Ice

[johnk]

It's one computer, with the small crowded HD running as C: and the large empty one as F:

I want to figure out how to make the F: the C:. From what I read, the drive is already labeled as F: and I don't know how to undo that.

Thanks

JK

[The Wise Monkey]

I would recommend using a tool such as Clonezilla to clone your C: drive to replace the F: drive:

http://clonezilla.org/

This will destroy everything on the F: drive, so I would recommend backing up anything essential before doing this.

This software is quite complicated, so be sure to read up on how to do it - this link shows the basic steps, but is not finished yet:

http://clonezilla.org/clonezilla-live/doc/showcontent.php?topic=03_disk_to_disk_clone

If you would rather go with a paid piece of software, then Acronis TrueImage is excellent.