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Copying my C drive to a flash drive

Archibald Nixon

Archibald Nixon

anti-life coach
I need to re-allocate some space from the D drive so I can actually add some new software to my shitty little laptop without the whole thing gagging. Everyone I've talked to stresses that you make a backup of the ENTIRE C drive before attempting this.

So I tried it, duh, the most direct way: click & drag. It seizes up in a matter of seconds with uncopyable files. Not unexpected, but chafed my precious sense of entitlement & convenience.

Thought maybe you could go the old MS/DOS route, but I did a little looking around online and this was advised against.

Norton Ghost was recommended at several places.

Any thoughts?
 
Sorry...yeah, basically my laptop came with a hard drive partitioned with 15gb on the C drive and 45gb on the D drive. The C is maxed out, and only by repeated cleanups & defrags have I kept it running (I could probably do a better job with the cleanups if I weren't terrified of wiping something that I think I need, or will want to use later). I also wanted to load a bunch of new software, but since that will no doubt push it over the edge, I did a little Googlage and found that you can re-partition with something called Partition Magic. However, most people who've re-partitioned say that no matter how you do it, it's imperative that you back up your entire main drive beforehand --there were more than a few tales of woe from people who tried one way or another and wound up losing everything on the HD.
 
This is outside my realm of expertise. I'd suggest, however, that you create a drive with all of your files that you want to keep (without some software that you can re-install on a new drive), and just wipe the old drive completely. Reformat, I mean. When you're reinstalling your OS (which is very simple) you can simply re-partition the drive then.

It's much easier than downloading a risky tool that could potentially wipe the entire thing and make it a giant pain in the ass to reformat later.
 
Conchaga said:
This is outside my realm of expertise. I'd suggest, however, that you create a drive with all of your files that you want to keep (without some software that you can re-install on a new drive), and just wipe the old drive completely. Reformat, I mean. When you're reinstalling your OS (which is very simple) you can simply re-partition the drive then.

It's much easier than downloading a risky tool that could potentially wipe the entire thing and make it a giant pain in the ass to reformat later.
Click to expand...
I've never re-installed WindowsXP...I'm frightened. Hold me.

Srsly: What does reformatting involve? I'll look into the OS & hardware literature tonight and see what I can unearth...brush up a bit while I'm at it.

I also forgot to mention that I was hoping to accomplish this with my 16gb thumbdrive, which should be able to hold all of the current HD (the notion of burning a pile of CD's fills my mind with visions of a smoking, melting laptop).

The thing is, when you're in WindowsXP and you try and simply copy from one drive to another, it'll get about ten seconds into it before a warning comes up stating that such 'n such file can't be copied, and halts the whole procedure. The few Q&A tech sites that I looked at say that you can't do it properly within Windows, and even in DOS mode all the files & pathways won't get copied (hidden files get left out, etc), leading to a big mess when you try and copy it back. That's where Norton Ghost typically gets mentioned.

But hell, I'm all for a simpler, nuts & bolts method. Might not be a bad idea anyway, to reformat the HD entirely --I'm sure there's some ugly shit lurking in there that could use a little digital sterilizing.
 
OK, a few questions.

Do you still have the original OS install disk for XP?
If not, do you know how to torrent?
If you don't know how to torrent, do you have the $$ for a new OS disk?

All the answers on how to reformat your drive and install an OS can be found very simply on google. It helps to have a second computer with internet access on hand to help with any troubleshooting. Though, any device with internet access works just as well. I reinstalled XP on this PC using my iPhone for Q&A.

Basically, what's involved is as follows:

1. going to your boot page to make sure that your disk drive is at the top of the boot list
2. Entering a few (simple) DOS commands that will reformat your entire drive.
3. The installation is a step-by-step (almost) idiot-proof instructions that the install disk basically does for you.
4. The annoying part is reinstalling all your old programs, games, etc.

The installation takes about an hour to three hours depending on the processor you have and the size of your HD. The reinstallation will take you about two days of tinkering.

The bonus to all of this is that if you bought yourself a cookie-cutter laptop like a dell or an HP, it will get rid of all that shite software that they install there which clutters up your memory and cpu.

I'll post a list of sites and recommended software later.
 
I concur with Conchaga. It seems it's an older machine, so a wipe and reinstall might be beneficial for a number of reasons. Unless you're extremely careful about clearing junk out of your registry, XP will fill itself with cruft and slow itself down considerably after a year or two. It's not that tough to reformat if you have an actual XP disc handy.

However, resizing partitions usually doesn't cause a problem PROVIDING you defrag the shit out of your drive (all partitions) first, preferably several times.
 
Conchaga said:
OK, a few questions.

Do you still have the original OS install disk for XP?
If not, do you know how to torrent?
If you don't know how to torrent, do you have the $$ for a new OS disk?
Click to expand...

Don't know how to torrent; don't even want to think about what a new OS disk costs...as for the laptop: I have a Sony VAIO and I don't remember it coming with an OS install disk, but I think there was a "VAIO recovery disk" (or a wizard that helps you make one)...I'll need to look in my box of computer gack to know for sure. I am sure there was never a Windows backup disk that came with the laptop when I bought it (XP was already installed). I also know that there's a wizard that resets everything to the original factory default.

CKLT, Conchaga: thanks for your help; it's appreciated. I'll poke around for a bit and post back here soon with any results.

:ballchain:
 
Well, if you don't want Vista, you're s.o.l. They stopped selling XP pro a couple months ago. I'd recommend learning to torrent, just so you can download a boot disk. Torrents are easy. Just install Azureus, go to the link I provided and burn the iso to disk using iso burner or some other free software.

Here are some links.

The torrent client I use: http://azureus.sourceforge.net/
XP Pro Black edition, pirated, no key needed: http://www.mininova.org/tor/2524578

I installed that version of XP and it works great.
 
Comments

:no: Archibald Nixon: thanks for useless link & shitty attitude, Aquadual.
Click to expand...

Your welcome Wordforge dumbass who thinks I'm Aquehonga's dual!!! You're so funny!!! :rofl:
Have I found myself another enemy, but this time on TK?

Why do you have a laptop with such a small hard drive anyway? Is the hard drive 1 hard drive that is partitioned or is it 2 separate hard drives. If C is only 15 GB I am assuming it's partitioned.
 
classichummus said:
Your welcome Wordforge dumbass who thinks I'm Aquehonga's dual!!! You're so funny!!! :rofl:
Have I found myself another enemy, but this time on TK?
Click to expand...
I misread the tone of your post; also forgot you were Dual's buddy, not Aq's. Apologies.

(and me = not from WF, ftr.)

Why do you have a laptop with such a small hard drive anyway? Is the hard drive 1 hard drive that is partitioned or is it 2 separate hard drives. If C is only 15 GB I am assuming it's partitioned.
Click to expand...
This was asked of me early on in my research --I'm about 98% certain it's a single hard drive, partitioned. Some time ago I actually opened the thing up to investigate another problem, and one HD is all I could find. The laptop itself also dates from late 2003, and is quite small (what I wanted at the time --the previous laptop was one of those fucking late-90's granite slabs.) They don't make it (or its accessories) anymore and I couldn't find the particular specs that would tell me one way or the other.
 
Yeah, sometimes programmers think it's a good thing to partition a drive. I've never understood the use. I mean, you can literally partition a drive so that it's one gig for the OS and operating programs and the rest can be files, but transferring them from drive to drive is time-consuming and drains your cpu while you do it.

Anyway, from what you've said, it seems yours is gonna be one drive. They normally won't put two drives on a laptop. It just doesn't have the space within the casing. You'll usually only find multiple drives in towers. However, those are normally custom-built ones, like mine.
 
Yeah, sometimes programmers think it's a good thing to partition a drive. I've never understood the use. I mean, you can literally partition a drive so that it's one gig for the OS and operating programs and the rest can be files, but transferring them from drive to drive is time-consuming and drains your cpu while you do it.

Anyway, from what you've said, it seems yours is gonna be one drive. They normally won't put two drives on a laptop. It just doesn't have the space within the casing. You'll usually only find multiple drives in towers. However, those are normally custom-built ones, like mine.
 
Conchaga said:
Yeah, sometimes programmers think it's a good thing to partition a drive. I've never understood the use. I mean, you can literally partition a drive so that it's one gig for the OS and operating programs and the rest can be files, but transferring them from drive to drive is time-consuming and drains your cpu while you do it.
Click to expand...
I think the original intent was to create a zone that viruses wouldn't wipe out if the main drive got infected --the key word being 'intent'. I'm not sure how well it ever worked (I've had to cleanse for & repair the after-effects of viruses, but none of them ever wiped everything out.) I mean, how hard would it be to make a virus that went after a second drive?
 
So it turns out the "VAIO Recovery" wizard that makes "restore points" (reserved portions of memory where you save a compressed version of your entire HD at that point in time, so if your computer gets badly compromised in the future you can "reset" the whole thing to that date --the drawback is that if you do it every few weeks or months or so without deleting older points, it eats up space like a motherfucker.) This same wizard also makes a recovery "kit", which (I think) is a series of OS backup disks, since I had to burn 9 of them. Didn't melt the fucking thing as I feared, so that was a relief.

Anyway: after making sure I had backup for everything, I reset the whole thing to its factory/default settings. During this process it gives you the option of re-partitioning your HD --my C drive now has 45 gigs to work with, instead of 15. :D

Reloading & resetting everything's been kind of a pain, though. I've got internet up & running again, and the antivirus. All my personal shit was easy enough to load. Some of the older software loadings have been troublesome. For instance, I still use my iPod Mini and, what with the older software and its constant "need" (for lack of a better description) to upgrade to the current version of iTunes, the re-installation's been tricky. It seems to recognize the Library just fine but not my playlists --which I really do NOT want to have to re-select again, song by fucking song.

All in all, it seems to perform more smoothly & quickly. I took CKLT's advice with the defragging, and it seems to help. Thanks once again to everyone and watch this space --I'll be sure to have further questions until I get this thing back up to 100% again.
 
Conchaga said:
Well, if you don't want Vista, you're s.o.l. They stopped selling XP pro a couple months ago. I'd recommend learning to torrent, just so you can download a boot disk. Torrents are easy. Just install Azureus, go to the link I provided and burn the iso to disk using iso burner or some other free software.

Here are some links.

The torrent client I use: http://azureus.sourceforge.net/
XP Pro Black edition, pirated, no key needed: http://www.mininova.org/tor/2524578

I installed that version of XP and it works great.
Click to expand...

Mmm, a chance to slap that bitch Vista down. Tempting, so very tempting.
 
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