help with new HDD?

[Winter Wolf]

Felix, did I say I dislike partitions? I don't dislike them, in fact I was trying to get my new HDD set up with two partitions to make my file managing easier, but my computer apparently did not like that.

In any case, I ended up with getting only a single partition, but my new HDD is installed, thank you all for your advice, if I ever have to go through this nightmare again I'll know there's a thread lurking in IW archives.

So this is how it panned out. Yesterday night I started the disk cloning process with a trial version of Acronis's TrueImage software, they were kind enough to provide a fully functioning 15 day download free of charge. If I ever have to swap another hard drive, I'm gonna keep them in mind. Anyway, first attempt I had my HDD partitioned, and that may or may not have been why the initial transfer failed. I figured maybe user error (hey, I am only *quasi* literate in computers after all) was the cause, so I reformatted the new HDD just to be safe and tried again. Took me the better part of six hours to get everything copied over on my molasses slow 1.1 USB, but at least it worked (so far). So I've only got the one partition at 55.88 GB, but it's functional and I can live with one partition.

Oh I see now, my comment about Chinese partitioning hard drives, gotcha. My gripe was not with partitions per se, but the fact that they insist on doing 10 GB partitions across the board. I'd rather have two at ~30 GB each or three at ~20 GB each, but I couldn't make it work with the limited tools and knowledge at my disposal.

If my second attempt had failed, it would have been a clean install, but the thing is, I *know* the setup I have works with all the stuff I have, albeit with a few hiccups. I can live with it. I was dreading it because a 1.1 USB connection to a DVD burner would have taken the better part of two days to back up my files, and living in China, I'd have to make a long distance international call to MS "support" to wrestle with the XP issue. No way in hell I'd be trying to do a walk through in Chinese, the communication barrier might have really screwed my chances. Plus I'd have to deal with things like my Norton Antivirus, my CC2 Pro, and some other assorted installed software.

In any event, the old HDD is sitting in a safe place just in case something unfortunate happens, I'll give it a week or two to make sure, then my wife is going to comandeer it for her purposes. Shame I couldn't do the partition thing like I wanted, but I'll live.

Thanks again for all the advice again. With any luck I can just not mess with my hardware again and wait until I get a new laptop sometime in the next 'fiddy year or so'.