New HD and OS - How to

Hello everyone - my PC is about 5 years old and I could use an upgrade in HD size and a new OS. So, I have gone out and purchased a new WD 80GB hard drive and Windows XP. I would like to leave my old HP20GB hard drive in the system (as a second storage place). My PC runs on an AMD Athelon 1.0 and has 512k of Ram so I understand this is enough for XP to run properly. I am now using Windows 98SE as my operating system. Could anyone list the steps that I need to do to get both HD's (the new and the old) up and running with XP as the new OS. I know this may be asking too much; but if you can just list the steps, it will tell me if I should try this myself or go to a shop for help. Thanks. Mike aka Tucats

Hi PCcC; Thanks for the reply. Well, I'm not sure that I need or want anymore $$ upgrades right now. I only use my PC for surfing, geocaching, genealogy and some banking. No fast gamer stuff or hi quality audio/digital needed in this house cause I'm retired, half blind, almost deaf, and could put the money to better use on viagra or wine. lol

Here is my current hardware stats:
Operating System System Model
Windows 98 SE (build 4.10.2222) Gigabyte Technology Co. Ltd.
Processor a Main Circuit Board b
1000 megahertz AMD Athlon
128 kilobyte primary memory cache
256 kilobyte secondary memory cache Board: Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd. 7ZX 1.0
Bus Clock: 100 megahertz
BIOS: American Megatrends Inc. 62710 11/14/2000
Drives Memory Modules c,d
20.56 Gigabytes Usable Hard Drive Capacity
10.02 Gigabytes Hard Drive Free Space

CREATIVE CD5233E [CD-ROM drive]
LITE-ON CD-RW SOHR-5238S [CD-ROM drive]
Generic floppy disk drive (3.5" )

IBM-DTLA-307020 [Hard drive] (20.58 GB) -- drive 0, s/n YHDYHT8W931, rev TX3OA50C, SMART Status: Healthy 512 Megabytes Installed Memory

Slot '0' has 128 MB
Slot '1' has 128 MB
Slot '2' has 256 MB
Local Drive Volumes

c: (on drive 0) 20.56 GB 10.02 GB free
Network Drives
None detected
Users Printers
No details available

Canon PIXMA iP5000 on MPUSBPRN01
Controllers Display
Standard Floppy Disk Controller
Primary IDE controller (dual fifo)
Secondary IDE controller (dual fifo)
VIA Bus Master PCI IDE Controller NVIDIA GeForce2 MX 400 (Compaq) [Display adapter]
Korea Data Systems Visual Sensation VS-7/VSx-7 [Monitor]
Bus Adapters Multimedia
VIA Tech 3038 PCI to USB Universal Host Controller
VIA Tech 3038 PCI to USB Universal Host Controller Creative Gameport Joystick
Creative Sound Blaster PCI128
Sound Blaster PCI128 Legacy Device
Wave Device for Voice Modem

I would like to keep 90% of the stuff on my current C: drive but especially some of the family pics and the genealogy stuff. Every New Years I say this is the year that I am going to back up my stuff...never seems to happen. I would even consider putting all 10GB of my current C drive over to the new 80GB drive if that is easier than leaving it where it is now. Even better, would it be possible to have the photo's and genealogy info on my old 20 GB drive; and put everything else on the new drive. I will do whatever is the norm and you think is best. And thanks for looking at this as well as your advice. Cheers - Mike aka Tucats

I wouldn't convert the drive to NTFS first. There is no need. Windows XP can read the FAT32 file system from Windows 98 just fine. And if you convert it first and something goes wrong and you need to boot back up to Windows 98 from this drive, you won't be able to.

Leave the drive FAT32, proceed with the Windows XP installation on the new drive. After everything's up and running and you're sure you won't need to boot from the old drive into Win 98 anymore, you can convert the drive to NTFS using Windows XP's built-in convert utility (no need to use the one from SysInternals). The conversion process does not lose any data.

The steps already listed are strait forward but I will interject a couple more.

After your computer has restarted from bios with the XP CD in it, it may ask you to "press any key to boot from CD" so press any key (I usually use the space bar since it's closest).

After that your computer will start loading all the default drivers that will let windows install. Then you get to a screen which asks you what you want to do: Install XP, Repair XP or exit. Click "enter" (I think).

Then it will ask you where you want to install XP on and your hard drive will appear as an unpartitioned space. If you want to keep the drive unpartitioned just click on it, choose the default number (this should be the entire drive minus 5% or so) and it will start formatting (this may take a while). If you want to partition it then choose the unpartitioned space but change the default value to something smaller, say 40gb, then partition the other one to the max default value (should be like 38gb).

Whether you partition or not is up to you. One reason to do so is if you keep data on here and your XP screws up later you don't lose the data if you reformat and install XP again. Basically it treats the two partitions as different drives even if they are on the same physical drive. You will have to decide if you want to partition at all and how big to make them. I would personally not partition as the drive isn't big enough.

Once you have finished creating your partitions choose the partition you want to install XP on (C drive) and it will start formatting it. Once it starts installing the windows components it will reboot (probably an hour or so later) and a nice screen will come up telling you your progress and will ask you questions periodically, just check up on it now and then.

As to how to use the hdd's. Use the 80gb as the OS / programs drive, install everything on here. Anything in "My documents" will also be stored on this drive by default. Use the 20gb as a data drive to store pictures, movies, music... etc.

Best of luck, Logitech! Keep us updated. I'm in a similar bind; I'm looking to get a bigger drive, but I want to keep my OS and files. Anyone know a good drive-mirroring ap? Preferably open-source, of course.