I currently have a WD 120g IDE and purchased a WD 320g IDE to replace my now filled HD. I followed the Data Lifeguard instructions but now when I switch HD's I get an error after the bios posts. Something about could not assign a ARQ (not IRQ) and a HAL. When I swap back to the old drive it boots fine and new drive is readable and writeable but not bootable.

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance

Gary

Any reason you cannot keep both? I almost invariably use at least 2 drives in my systems these days and this is even more a reason to do so with the advent of RAID systems.

What I would do if I were you is to transfer nearly all of your data files to the new drive with it connected as Slave. Then I would relocate your 'My Documents' folder to that drive. Emails, tax programs and other files can be redirected to that drive as well.

There is lots more you can do to customize the pc but this is the most basic way to ensure you don't lose valuable data if the event of needing to reload Windows should occur. You can reload Windows to your 120 gig drive to your heart's content without the worry of losing the data on the Slave drive. :)

Oh, and Welcome to http://www.pcguide.com/ubb/pcgubb.gif

Any reason you cannot keep both? I almost invariably use at least 2 drives in my systems these days and this is even more a reason to do so with the advent of RAID systems.

What I would do if I were you is to transfer nearly all of your data files to the new drive with it connected as Slave. Then I would relocate your 'My Documents' folder to that drive. Emails, tax programs and other files can be redirected to that drive as well.

There is lots more you can do to customize the pc but this is the most basic way to ensure you don't lose valuable data if the event of needing to reload Windows should occur. You can reload Windows to your 120 gig drive to your heart's content without the worry of losing the data on the Slave drive. :)

Oh, and Welcome to http://www.pcguide.com/ubb/pcgubb.gif



Thanks for the Welcome and quick reply.

I am considering using the 120 as a backup to the 320. This is my problem, I have the 120 partitioned to 10g on the C: and 110g on the E: with the OS on the C: incase of reformatting I only lose the OS and not all my data. But with all the OS updates and some programs that were loaded on the C: partition it now has only 500mb left. I constently get Low Disk warnings and have uninstalled all that I think is possible on that partition to free up space but I have finally ran out of space. I really don't want to reformat the drive or OS, I would rather just use the new 320 partitioned 40g & 280g and use the 120 with just 1 partition for all my large files.

I suggest that you delete any partitions on the new drive and then copy just the E partition to the new drive. You can do both of these using BiNG (in my sig) from a prepared boot CD or floppy.

When you reboot into windows having done this the system will probably "detect new hardware" and want to reboot. If so let it. Then go into Disk Management and check that you can see both E and its copy with a new drive letter. Change the drive letter of E to say X or just temporarily remove its drive letter altogether and then change the letter of the new copied partition to E. Reboot (you may also have to reboot after changing or removing E before that letter gets free'd up for reallocation).

If your system now functions with its old C and the new E you can decide what to do next in terms or reformatting the original E partition or resizing the new one or adding new partitions etc etc. Post back if anything is unclear.

For added security you could create a new partition in the new drive before you begin (about 80 - 100gig is likely to be big enough) and use BiNG to make image files of the current C and/or the current E partitions into it. That way if all goes awry later-on you can restore your original hard drive from those two image files.

I have assumed you are running WinXP - that of course may not be the case.