Moving Up To Velociraptor

[RazorFace]

I'm going to be building a new computer soon to replace my Intel D865PERL. I can't afford all the parts at once so I'm going to be doing it piecemeal. Starting with replacing my current drives. As it stands I would simply like to create a partition image of my operating systems (Windows XP Pro SP3) and copy it onto a newly installed Western Digital 300 GB Velociraptor.

Does anyone see a problem with this simple move? Is it possible that Windows will not boot up after a simple partition move?

The operating system is currently installed on a MAXTOR 6L080L4 (IDE) drive. And I store my data files on two Maxtor 6Y080M0 (SATA) drives. I intend to create partition images of these two drives and copy them onto a Western Digital RE3 WD5002ABYS.

Am I worried for nothing, or as drive swap as simple as it sounds?

RazorFace

[CrowdAds]

[ChAsM]

Hello RazorFace.

So long as you're keeping the rest of your hardware the same, you should have little trouble.

What imaging software will you be using? Older versions of Ghost (very popular), among others, will have trouble with recognizing SATA drives. Acronis TrueImage works well. I can't speak for any others as it's what I've come to like.

G/L!!!

[ctal]

I don't see any potential problems. You may want to look at the following thread, for some discussion of various alternative imaging programs:

http://www.abxzone.com/forums/f49/lo...am-112229.html

You might have trouble trying to use some of these programs on recent motherboards that support AHCI, if you were using AHCI mode, because drivers specific to the motherboard would probably be required for the drives to be visible to the imaging program. But that is not the case here, with your motherboard. And even if it were the case, you could disable AHCI in the bios when running the imaging program, assuming you were running it from a bootable cd or floppy (as opposed to running it within Windows, which I and many others don't recommend when it comes to imaging the Windows partition itself).

I don't think there is any reason not to image the two data drives by running the imaging program within Windows (as opposed to running it on a bootable cd or floppy). I would think that the sata drives should then be visible to pretty much any imaging program, old or new, via Windows.

You would have to initially restore the images of the two data drives to two separate partitions on the new single data drive. Some partition management programs will allow you to subsequently merge the two partitions, if you so desire. Or you could accomplish the same thing by copying the files from one partition to the other, on the new drive, then deleting the empty partition and expanding the used partition, using just about any partition manager.

Regards,
-- Al

[PeterT]

Originally Posted by ctal

...You might have trouble trying to use some of these programs on recent motherboards that support AHCI, if you were using AHCI mode, because drivers specific to the motherboard would probably be required for the drives to be visible to the imaging program...

Yes, I had this problem with Acronis TI 11 Home on the P45/ICH10 board in my sig. I ended up setting it as "non-AHCI" in the BIOS and installing Vista64 that way.

[ctal]

Peter -- I don't think you're missing much. In fact on my two recent builds I chose not to enable AHCI from the outset. Following is a quote from a thread I started a while back about one of those builds, in which I responded to someone asking if I was using AHCI:

Originally Posted by ctal

The main advantage of AHCI, given that I do not intend to set up a RAID array, appears to be that it enables utilization of the NCQ feature of the hdd's. At best that sounds like a fairly minor benefit, especially for non-server applications such as this. I've seen some indications that it may even worsen performance in non-server applications. And more importantly, apparently there is a bug in both XP and Vista that can (at least sometimes) cause SATA optical drives to disappear when AHCI is used. There is a hotfix for Vista for that problem, but apparently not for XP (which is what I'll be using).

The other advantages of AHCI, which I understand to be hot-plugging of drives and staggered spin-up of multiple drives, don't seem important to me.

Finally, I have a considerable number of tools and utilities I use that run from bootable floppies or cd's. If I were to use AHCI, I'd either have to re-do them to include AHCI-mode drivers, where possible, or else turn AHCI off in the bios every time I used them, which would be an inconvenience I'd rather avoid.

RazorFace -- Sorry for getting a bit off topic here. This information may be useful to you, though, when you upgrade the mobo.

Regards,
-- Al

[polonyc2]

I currently have AHCI disabled but am wondering if Vista users should enable it for potential performance gains...since Vista has built in AHCI drivers I'm thinking it should work better then XP + AHCI enabled...I mostly use my system for gaming and that is why I always disable AHCI but I'm tempted to try it out...anyone know how AHCI runs with Vista?

as far as the Vista AHCI bug which caused drives to disappear I believe this was fixed with SP1

[PeterT]

Originally Posted by ctal

Peter -- I don't think you're missing much. In fact on my two recent builds I chose not to enable AHCI from the outset. Following is a quote from a thread I started a while back about one of those builds, in which I responded to someone asking if I was using AHCI...
Regards,
-- Al

Thanks Al. I remember that thread.


RazorFace,
Sorry for the

[RazorFace]

Originally Posted by ChAsM

Hello RazorFace.

So long as you're keeping the rest of your hardware the same, you should have little trouble.

What imaging software will you be using? Older versions of Ghost (very popular), among others, will have trouble with recognizing SATA drives. Acronis TrueImage works well. I can't speak for any others as it's what I've come to like.

G/L!!!

Oops, my bad

I should have mentioned I'll be using TI Home 2009.

Thnx for everyone's input. I feel assured.

[polonyc2]

after doing some research I found a nice AHCI vs IDE– Benchmark page...I still think that there is no real difference either way but it's nice to see different people's results on this...next time I do a reformat I think I'm going to enable AHCI on my system

AHCI vs IDE ? Benchmark & Advantage Expertester

[ctal]

Good find, Poly -- thanks.

Best for the holidays & new year!

-- Al