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Saturday, January 9th, 2010 05:59 pm
upgrade mark 2: the hard drive is in the external enclosure!
So as an early birthday present to myself, I went to Frye's and get an enclosure to do the transfer to my hard drive. I still dont' know what happened to the first replacement I had, so I went ahead and bought a Western digital 320 GB/7200 RPM (on sale!) and started formatting and partitioning; when everything's done and this one is transferred into my computer, I'll put the other drive in and examine it. If it is broken--since it is not returnable--well, that is why God invented screwdrivers, and I've always been curious what goes on inside a hard drive. My goals are low; today, all I want is to get Windows 7 installed on the new drive and have both partitions running correctly. So total goals are as follows:
1.) format and partition drive (OS Partition complete, second one at 53%)
2.) install Windows 7
3.) panic. write porn. it will be very bad.
4.) install Office
5.) install Firefox
6.) install all programming programs
7.) install chat programs
8.) move settings.
9.) move all personal files, folders, information, music
10.) decide what to do with media. As I've moved a lot of it to my passport drive, but that's running out of space. And my big external is sort of the main backup for everyone, so I try not to put anything on there that I can't stand to lose.
11.) decide what else to install.
So far, we are at the Partition/Format part of the show. I do like the enclosure instead of doing this bare with wires. It feels a lot more secure to see it there, and it doesn't need a power source, unlike the USB to SATA transfer cables, which right now I cannot figure out why I thought would be a better idea than this.
adventures with observations
The first SATA I was trying to do this with is--weird. I'm actually not sure if a.) there's oemthing wrong with it, b.) I just have lousy luck or c.) unknown. After losing the block power, I opened Child's computer and hooked it up with a converter to his power in there to evaluate the problem. Power was fine, and it spun up, but the logical drives couldn't read it, which argues it's either corrupted, broken, or possibly, that it's not entirely compatible with his computer and was confused.
Recommended; if you are transferring a 2.5 hard drive, get the enclosure. It cost about the same as the USB to SATA thingie, it does not require a secondary power source, and it's a goddamn enclosure and feels more secure. It also has a pretty blue light. It will also be the new enclosure of my old hard drive, which maybe I can reformat and just add all the media onto it except music? I feel I need several of these.
Note: the USB to SATA/IDE, however, if you have old IDE drives, works like whoa on IDE. I read my old laptop's IDE perfectly, and it does not require external power, just plug and go. Granted, both of these are limited by the speed of USB 2.0, but whatever. It's also plug-and-play compatible, so honestly, if you keep your drives for a while or just like to have a basic kit, I'd recommend having this just for that, which is why I don't regret it.
Note to computer designers: when can we get hot-swap secondary hard drives? I mean, I know some computers do have secondary hard drives standard, but those are usually custom and expensive and I've been reading on how, but seriously, for a laptop, that would be awesome. Actually, some Dells can actually do something simliar with the DVD/CD bay if you buy a bay enclosure to install the drive in, but seriously, the speed of SATA or eSATA combined with a removable drive--like cake and ice cream. Devote the primary to the OS and required programs, but imagine a universe where you can have three or four fast secondaries you can swap out with programs/media/data you don't need all the time. They could be color coordinated. Not to mention it would be painfully easy to backup required information easily on multiple drives in case of failure if you put a partition on every secondary with just required backup info, keep a copy of the main registry there in case of corruption, the world would be your oyster....
Actually, thinking on that, I'd use the primary basically for OS, Office, Firefox, my chat programs, and daily tasks. God. I could have an entire drive to hold just for programming. The world, it could be beautiful, man, and it would give laptops the joys of multiple internal hard drive space without, you know, needing all that space. Hmm. And also organize root level access better.
This is where I say I actually pulled the design of my motherboard and okay, I am not a professional builder, just someone with an unnatural love of tools, but I am not seeing anything to negate the benefits and there's an area that is designated for a secondary SATA (no connectors, however, and honestly, even if I could install that, the heat issue would be--well, an issue, and there are things I would need someone to teach me to do directly, and one of those would be custom heat sinks). Though I don't know if SATA or eSATA connections would support hot-swapping, come on, why not? Maybe just the removable hardware thing, but whatever, that's still faster than USB 2.0. even if you can do doubles there (which mine may be doing? It didn't say, so I plugged both in with a faint feeling of hope).
I mean, I guess you'd have to redesign the case, but give me a good set of cutters and a sautering kit and I could figure this out.
Yes, I am planning out my imaginary file system on a computer design that has not been created. I'm allowed to do that. NTFS formatting takes for freaking ever.
Curious--if anyone has any advice before I start the move, feel free to drop it here. I only did two partitions because I couldn't find any practical reason to have more, and the only reason I'm putting Windows 7 in a 25G partition is to see if that would help with speed, or at minimum, just have a single place for my OS for easier reinstallation. Speaking practically, at the best of times I'm weirdly anal about mapping my drives and keeping everything in certain specific places that are logical to me, and having like, five partitions could only lead to some kind of anal retentive breakdown (though fun; I would have fun). I also realize that speed decreases the farther from the edge, so having a slow partition when the whole point of the upgrade was to get faster would be counterintuitive.
95%. Looks like Windows 7 is in my immediate future.
ETA: So Windows 7 refuses to install via USB or IEEE. I went to google and started to type install Windows 7
...and it filled in to USB.
So, I mean, it's not like I really believe google is psychic but seriously, is google psychic?
1.) format and partition drive (OS Partition complete, second one at 53%)
2.) install Windows 7
3.) panic. write porn. it will be very bad.
4.) install Office
5.) install Firefox
6.) install all programming programs
7.) install chat programs
8.) move settings.
9.) move all personal files, folders, information, music
10.) decide what to do with media. As I've moved a lot of it to my passport drive, but that's running out of space. And my big external is sort of the main backup for everyone, so I try not to put anything on there that I can't stand to lose.
11.) decide what else to install.
So far, we are at the Partition/Format part of the show. I do like the enclosure instead of doing this bare with wires. It feels a lot more secure to see it there, and it doesn't need a power source, unlike the USB to SATA transfer cables, which right now I cannot figure out why I thought would be a better idea than this.
adventures with observations
The first SATA I was trying to do this with is--weird. I'm actually not sure if a.) there's oemthing wrong with it, b.) I just have lousy luck or c.) unknown. After losing the block power, I opened Child's computer and hooked it up with a converter to his power in there to evaluate the problem. Power was fine, and it spun up, but the logical drives couldn't read it, which argues it's either corrupted, broken, or possibly, that it's not entirely compatible with his computer and was confused.
Recommended; if you are transferring a 2.5 hard drive, get the enclosure. It cost about the same as the USB to SATA thingie, it does not require a secondary power source, and it's a goddamn enclosure and feels more secure. It also has a pretty blue light. It will also be the new enclosure of my old hard drive, which maybe I can reformat and just add all the media onto it except music? I feel I need several of these.
Note: the USB to SATA/IDE, however, if you have old IDE drives, works like whoa on IDE. I read my old laptop's IDE perfectly, and it does not require external power, just plug and go. Granted, both of these are limited by the speed of USB 2.0, but whatever. It's also plug-and-play compatible, so honestly, if you keep your drives for a while or just like to have a basic kit, I'd recommend having this just for that, which is why I don't regret it.
Note to computer designers: when can we get hot-swap secondary hard drives? I mean, I know some computers do have secondary hard drives standard, but those are usually custom and expensive and I've been reading on how, but seriously, for a laptop, that would be awesome. Actually, some Dells can actually do something simliar with the DVD/CD bay if you buy a bay enclosure to install the drive in, but seriously, the speed of SATA or eSATA combined with a removable drive--like cake and ice cream. Devote the primary to the OS and required programs, but imagine a universe where you can have three or four fast secondaries you can swap out with programs/media/data you don't need all the time. They could be color coordinated. Not to mention it would be painfully easy to backup required information easily on multiple drives in case of failure if you put a partition on every secondary with just required backup info, keep a copy of the main registry there in case of corruption, the world would be your oyster....
Actually, thinking on that, I'd use the primary basically for OS, Office, Firefox, my chat programs, and daily tasks. God. I could have an entire drive to hold just for programming. The world, it could be beautiful, man, and it would give laptops the joys of multiple internal hard drive space without, you know, needing all that space. Hmm. And also organize root level access better.
This is where I say I actually pulled the design of my motherboard and okay, I am not a professional builder, just someone with an unnatural love of tools, but I am not seeing anything to negate the benefits and there's an area that is designated for a secondary SATA (no connectors, however, and honestly, even if I could install that, the heat issue would be--well, an issue, and there are things I would need someone to teach me to do directly, and one of those would be custom heat sinks). Though I don't know if SATA or eSATA connections would support hot-swapping, come on, why not? Maybe just the removable hardware thing, but whatever, that's still faster than USB 2.0. even if you can do doubles there (which mine may be doing? It didn't say, so I plugged both in with a faint feeling of hope).
I mean, I guess you'd have to redesign the case, but give me a good set of cutters and a sautering kit and I could figure this out.
Yes, I am planning out my imaginary file system on a computer design that has not been created. I'm allowed to do that. NTFS formatting takes for freaking ever.
Curious--if anyone has any advice before I start the move, feel free to drop it here. I only did two partitions because I couldn't find any practical reason to have more, and the only reason I'm putting Windows 7 in a 25G partition is to see if that would help with speed, or at minimum, just have a single place for my OS for easier reinstallation. Speaking practically, at the best of times I'm weirdly anal about mapping my drives and keeping everything in certain specific places that are logical to me, and having like, five partitions could only lead to some kind of anal retentive breakdown (though fun; I would have fun). I also realize that speed decreases the farther from the edge, so having a slow partition when the whole point of the upgrade was to get faster would be counterintuitive.
95%. Looks like Windows 7 is in my immediate future.
ETA: So Windows 7 refuses to install via USB or IEEE. I went to google and started to type install Windows 7
...and it filled in to USB.
So, I mean, it's not like I really believe google is psychic but seriously, is google psychic?
