PC Partition "Magic."

What are you using it for George? I'd be tempted to just wipe and format and start off with a clean OS.

Only the Forum, email, and Skype really. And a bit of WAV and Paint editing, but the workspace is in Partition "D" so that needs to stay the current size.

The trouble is that I don't have my friend's original XP disc, and he cannot find it! So I have to keep the current set up. In the Autumn I plan to get a cheap new laptop, and that will have enough HD space for me far too much probably. Assuming I have enough tp buy it, that is.

Thanks from George

Have had a quick look and can't find any freeware that offers what you seem to need. I know it is possible in Vista with the standard utility, but I never tried doing it in XP, and am not even sure there is a utility that can do it. A second drive and some software that allowed you to copy partitions might allow you to do it though. Maybe see if you have another friend with an unwanted computer you can borrow a hard drive from, or have a look on Flea Bay, you'd only need a drive as big as the partitions you want to salvage, and now you can get sub £100 TB hard drives I can't imagine 2nd hand 10-20GB ones go for much.

I do have a nice external HD, but not yet the necessary USB cable. I think it is 40 or 100 Gig, so I will get a USB flex this weekend, and see if I can do something useful with it!

Thanks from G

Drive Image XML probably can do it. The cheapest, easiest way to do is to install a 2nd internal HDD.

Have you considered a new computer? perhaps an off-lease one.

Old Naim equipment still does a good job reliably. Old computers are different....

Regards.

Phil

Dear Phil,

I do not think the mother board would carry another [or even different] HD, as it is so old by now.

I shall save for a laptop and pray that the old thing runs till then!

George

George

You could remove the external HD from its case and fit it into the PC. Assuming it’s a PATA drive, not a more modern SATA drive.

Then use software similar to Maxtor maxblast to transfer the entire contents of the old drive to the new drive. It will also transfer the operating system.

http://www.seagate.com/support/maxblast/mb_ug.en.pdf


It works on older PC’s. I used it to transfer the data from a 2Gb to 20Gb on a Pentium 200 machine. From memory, the old drive becomes useless until it is reformatted.

Once reformatted you could you could transfer the operating system back onto the old drive.

George,

Paragon's partition Manager 8.5 will merge your partitions and allow other manipulations.

It was given away on the PCPro magazine DVD of Oct 2007. It is a 23.6MB single extractable file.

If you can accept a file of this size and your profile e-mail is correct, let me know and I'll blast it your way.

Be quick though - I'm off to Canada next week.

Fraser

Copy the contents of the whole thing onto a 8GB flash drive, dust it and put a Linux distribution on it with OpenOffice or StarOffice. Cheap as chips and more computationally efficient.

I wouldn't let a Win95 PC near my network. Ever. And with WinXP, it's probably running as slow as a dog.

quote:

Originally posted by David Dever:
put a Linux distribution on it with OpenOffice or StarOffice.

I’m surprised the phrase “Get a Mac” hasn’t reared its ugly head.

George,

I seem to remember that you can't download service pack 2 for xp from windows update, which might mean that even if you did get hold of your friends disk you might run into difficulties. It depends how old the disk is.

Just something you should maybe check before you re-install it, if the disk ever turns up.

Or you could just get a mac.

Dear Frazer,

Thanks for the idea. My email address is correct in the profile, so please will you send me an email and then I can reply.

Thanks to everyone for all the help.

Many thanks George

quote:

Originally posted by David Scott?:
George,

I seem to remember that you can't download service pack 2 for xp from windows update, which might mean that even if you did get hold of your friends disk you might run into difficulties. It depends how old the disk is.

Just something you should maybe check before you re-install it, if the disk ever turns up.

Or you could just get a mac.

But then Apple charges for service packs....

Iused to be a real apple partisan. I got an iMac in 97 or whenever they came out - and in those days Mac users had to put up with an unbelievable amount of bullshit and disinformation from PC mags and salespeople who were smugly convinced of the superiority of pcs and would mysteriously assert that imacs were only for surfing, Macs were only good for photoshop etc. Mac users would make similarly ridiculous claims about it being impossible to do creative work on a PC etc.

My imac froze far too often for a few months and then became more stable as various updates were released. After less than a year it was utterly reliable, though of course it came to seem slow compared to other computers. By the time I stopped using it, my son had got a PC and I had begun to realise that a lot of what Mac users said about windows wasn't true. You can get any computer to do just about anything any other one of similar specs can do, so that's all that matters, yes?

Not for me. It would be hard to explain why, but I'm completely sick of windows - XP and Vista - in a way I never got sick of MacOs. If my imac had a bigger screen and a driver for my printer I would still use it. Macs do just the same things as PCs but seem to do them more pleasantly and on the whole more reliably (with exceptions of course). Naim forum-ites should understand that someone might choose to pay for such a thing if they had the money. And if I had the money, I would. I wouldn't proselytise any more though and I wasn't seriously suggesting it to George. Doesn't sound like something he would want to spend money on. Each to his own.

Dear Dave,

I would love to have the spare money for a Mac. My sister in law had one with my brother [left behind on separation], and it was beautiful machine to use. But given that I would rather buy more recorded music, I accept that my friend's ancient [and it is rather slow, but faster enough for me to type - all that matters really] PC is sufficient for my need. It would drive many people up the wall, as it certainly struggles speed-wise, with the demands of XP as David Dever correctly notes, but it is stable. In two years it has only frozen once ...

I hope to fix the partitions differently this weekend, and then the continuous XP patches can still be accommodated, and I may be able to work at editing WAV files again. Sadly I have no chance with the HD space available now in “C” and the workspace used to be fine in “D” but refuses to function like that at the moment! My friend fixed this sometime ago, and something has gone left-field with it currently!

I don’t like to fiddle in case I wreck it, and continued function is the most important thing just now!

This editing of WAV files is a little bit of madness I enjoy, straightening out the catastrophic editing on some commercial recordings, especially un-rhythmic side breaks in 78 record transfers! If I can fix the issue I am happy to!

ATB from George

I am a Mac partisan, to a certain degree, but appreciate that there are Linux distributions that, for most people, would allow them to soldier on with their existing hardware while keeping secure, at a very reasonable or non-existent price.

I used to build PC desktop workstations in a previous life, and most of the architectural problems remain, fifteen years later. I avoid repair of people's desktop PCs like the plague, given the likelihood that both user and vendor are responsible for most of the functional problems, and not the hardware itself.

Methinks the days of the Windows desktop as the dominant UI for web browsing and e-mail access are numbered–I think the rise of capable appliances (web tablets, cell phones, entertainment appliances) has lowered the threshold for the pain of managing their devices with buggy desktop OSes.

(as I type this on a Nokia N800 Linux web tablet, in a comfortable chair)

Could have a look at GNU Parted - its free.

I have it burnt on a CD but have not used it yet, but it is supposed to do all the partitioning type of thing.

quote:

But then Apple charges for service packs....

Jim

I download and install them for free using the Software update - they are not called service packs, but software updates. I have moved frpm 10.4.0 to 10.4.11 (11 service packs) and there is no charge.

Apple does charge for major release upgrades in the same way Microsoft does. Well Mr Jobs has to eat

It costs less to keep the Amiga partition current. The TripOs kernel is much better than Unix IMHO, which in turn is better than Windoze. In this age of appliances I wonder why we need old fashioned OSs though ... and just to show computing has gone full circle now all the talk is of virtualisation.

ATB Rotf

I use Gparted for all partitioning type stuff and it works rather well although it can be a bit daunting for first time users when it takes a bit of time to rattle through setting the environment prior to launching the disk management part of things. So take plenty backups and give it a go .

Not a computer buff! If is not obvious, I will definately leave it well alone and delete Office 2000. Then you will have to put up with my typos, as Word's spelling checker will go!

George

"A man's gotta know his limitations."
Harry Callaghan 1971

quote:

Originally posted by GFFJ:
I will definately leave it well alone and delete Office 2000. Then you will have to put up with my typos, as Word's spelling checker will go!

A problem arises because some programs insist on installing themselves on the C: drive. I had an infinitely future proof set of partition sizes on my previous self-built PC.

Everything seemed as intended until I used it. It then became a constant battle against log files, untemp "temp" files and programmes which would only install under C: Programs.

The final straw was Picassa - which I liked but which built its increasingly enormous database on C:.

The effect, if C: becomes very constrained, is to slow the PC down greatly.

You can - uninstall Office and (as you have the discs) re-install on D:. Move you swapfile from C: to D: (or elsewhere) and think about any programmes you may have added but no longer use.

The last time I contemplated making hardware upgrades to my PC I found it was more effective to buy a new machine. Laptop, quiet, DVD drive, built-in wireless, webcam, card reader, and Vista - which I now like.

I didn't even agonise over the choice. Just wandered in after a nice curry in Brick Lane with a friend who had spent the whole meal telling me to buy a Mac (which he had just done - along with the T-shirt) and bought the first PC that ticked a few boxes.

It cost £500 - I saw it the next week for £400 and they are probably paying people to take it home now. Nothing special but, once the memory was doubled, works like a dream and the old battleship sits increasingly unused. The plan being to press it into service transferring some cassettes to CD - it having a proper sound card and two CD drives.

By the way - you can use Firefox (version 2 seems stable) and an add-on English dictionary as wrute as gud as I dun.

Dear Adam,

I have my legitimately licensed Office 2000 discs, so can re-install on D, which frees up a lot of space on C, and as you say the C seems to be the default for all "temp" files, and hence the problem as it has really run out of spare space in spite of efforts to delete unused programs and regular deletion of those "temp" files I can seem to access.

I even shifted my Nero to D and it still insisted on putting the "temp" files in C!

The real answer is a new cheapish laptop, but that is out till the Autumn at the earliest. And of course a complete reformatting and reloading of XP is out because of the reasons stated earlier. I do not have the original discs. They are my one friends legitimate old OS and it is his [otherwise scrapped] PC. So rock and hard place come to mind!

Thanks for the reply, and, to all others, the replies. I know my limitations with PCs. Considerable limitations!

ATB from George

Be careful George if buying a cheap laptop -- a friend of mine bought one recently and the battery life is very poor. James H.

George,

You can build a new pc for less than 150 quid if you have a monitor and ity would be much better than an old laptop just stick Linux on it and away you go, I'll do it for you if you want. I use PCLinuxOS easy peasy to use and no worries of virus's, spyware & worms and all the associated software that goes with it.



Dean..LINUX RULES GO TUX