Pretty sure my HDD is on its way out...

[MasterBlaster76]

...when it is being accessed, it makes a rattling noise. If it is on the way out, how do I go about transferring all the data on it to a new drive? And I might install Win 98 on it as well - so I can run older software without problems, most of them just won't play ball with Win XP, so do you install Win 98 first and then Win XP?

Thanks in advance for your help.

 

[aussie1st]

Obvious way just copy and paste your content onto your new drive. You will need one of those external hdd enclosures that allows you to use your new drive as an external hdd. Then plug that into your computer, copy all the stuff you want from your current hdd.

And yea I would say install Win 98 then Win XP. Make sure you create a partition for Win XP.

 

[MasterBlaster76]

Thanks. I'm looking at this for my new HDD:

Nabiltech UK Ltd

 

[iridescentt]

Try this. Bit more expo' but it outperforms most in it's price range.

 

[MasterBlaster76]

It doesn't do it all the time when it's being accessed though, but when it does, it is a noticeable rattling sound, so probably is time to look into a new one. How big is Windows 7's installation by the way? I will probably dual boot with Win 7 and XP - stuff Win 98: too much hassle. I need to know how big I need to make the C:\ partition. We did partitions on my course, but I can't remember now, but isn't setting a partition with Win XP fairly simple - more simple than Win 98 in any case? I'm probably going to get a 500gb HDD.

Course was a disappointment overall - going by the initial interview, we'd be spending most of our time inside the PCs, ripping 'em apart! Nope. We probably worked inside the systems a total of eight times over the course. We never installed the entire system from an empty case to a working PC. We didn't even install any PSUs or Motherboards, for God's sake! I wanted to leave the course feeling at least slightly confident about building a system. There was even a whole goddam unit on Business - called Customer Support. It had nothing to do with Customer Support at all - no roleplay or anything. Sorry about that, but it was something I needed to get off my chest. Rant over!

Oh well. Probably stuck with temping in office work or something while going to auditions. Could be worse, I suppose...

 

[angryangy]

Win 7 x64 asks for a minimum 20GB partition, but you'll want more.

 

[angryangy]

I recommend getting a disk or USB stick with GParted on it. GParted is a Linux based partition manager. You just boot from the disk and it loads the mouse-driven GUI. It's not only good for laying out a new hard drive and tweaking the partitions, but you can make perfect 1:1 copies of your old partitions and move existing data around seamlessly. As it's a LiveCD, you can use this on any computer regardless of the state it is in, so it's also a powerful recovery tool.
GParted -- Welcome

 

[MasterBlaster76]

Thanks for all your help, guys.

Edit: One other thing: how long does it take to defrag/scan with AVG a 500gb HDD?

 

[Kev]

I would think somewhere in the region of bloody ages.

I've never bothered to time stuff like that, I just leave them going in the background.

 

[MasterBlaster76]

I would think somewhere in the region of bloody ages.

I've never bothered to time stuff like that, I just leave them going in the background.

Can you still play games while doing a scan, or defragmenting the disk then? Won't it slow the game down, or make the process less effective?

 

[Kev]

I generally don't notice much of a performance drop while scanning, but then I'm not a massive gamer. As long as you have a half decent PC I doubt you'll notice much difference in performance.

 

[Kshitiz_Indian]

All slowing if any, I'd think would be due to the HDD getting bottlenecked. Depends on the game, like Crysis uses a lot of HDD in game so you might get stutters, but in games where your memory is enough to house the entire thing, you shouldn't get much bottleneck once the game has loaded.

 

[MasterBlaster76]

All slowing if any, I'd think would be due to the HDD getting bottlenecked. Depends on the game, like Crysis uses a lot of HDD in game so you might get stutters, but in games where your memory is enough to house the entire thing, you shouldn't get much bottleneck once the game has loaded.

So when I go to 3Gb (as I'm going to very soon), I can scan and defrag while gaming? I'm sure someone here once said that playing while scanning/defragging can make the process less effective.

Edit: How do you mean, HDD bottlenecked? Are there HDDs less likely to get bottlenecked, if so could you post some links please?

MasterBlaster76 added 1 Minutes and 13 Seconds later...

I generally don't notice much of a performance drop while scanning, but then I'm not a massive gamer. As long as you have a half decent PC I doubt you'll notice much difference in performance.

And I definitely have a half-decent PC.

 

[Kshitiz_Indian]

By HDD bottlenecked I simply meant that the HDD's reading capabilities were on their limit. When you scan / defrag it takes quite a toll on the HDD since it has to read / re arrange every file. In short, you could use the analogy of a processor being nearly 100% used here and any more load slowing down both of the works it is doing.

Normal browsing on modern computers with enough memory should be fine since most if it is in the memory and can be readily used.

I'm not talking HDD interface here [SATA etc.], infact teh actual drives. Which is why people are pushing for SSD's...

When you load a game it loads quite a lot of data from HDD to memory so that is likely to suffer if there is too much data. Also if its a heavy game and the memory is not enough to load all data at once, HDD activity generally kicks up so in a Defrag / Scan environment that is going to suffer as well.

Hope that cleared it up, let me know if not.

Kshitiz

 

[MasterBlaster76]

By HDD bottlenecked I simply meant that the HDD's reading capabilities were on their limit. When you scan / defrag it takes quite a toll on the HDD since it has to read / re arrange every file. In short, you could use the analogy of a processor being nearly 100% used here and any more load slowing down both of the works it is doing.

Normal browsing on modern computers with enough memory should be fine since most if it is in the memory and can be readily used.

I'm not talking HDD interface here [SATA etc.], infact teh actual drives. Which is why people are pushing for SSD's...

When you load a game it loads quite a lot of data from HDD to memory so that is likely to suffer if there is too much data. Also if its a heavy game and the memory is not enough to load all data at once, HDD activity generally kicks up so in a Defrag / Scan environment that is going to suffer as well.

Hope that cleared it up, let me know if not.

Kshitiz

But SSDs are still too expensive with relatively small storage, aren't they? And are there any non SSDs that are less likely to get bottlenecked? If I'm getting a new HDD, I might as well get a good one. More RAM would help either way, wouldn't it? I think I'll stick to 3Gb though: I don't want to change my OS right now and I have no interest in Vista. I will get Win 7 when it comes out, as long as it isn't ridiculously expensive.