LangaList, March 16, 2006

No-Reformat Way To Add Or Replace A Hard Drive

If you don't mind just a little geekiness--- just a little, honest!--- there are several tips and tricks that can give you enormous flexibility in adding or replacing a drive in a PC. It's fast, fairly easy, and can save you many headaches in trying to retain as much of your original setup as possible. In fact, you often can add or replace a drive--- moving the OS and all your data from the old drive to the new--- *without* having to reformat or reinstall anything. That's what we discuss in a new article posted at http://www.informationweek.com/1080/langa.htm .

The information in this article stands on its own, but it also fits into a wider context: You can read it as-is, or think of it as "Part Two" of a three-part article: Previously, in "Another Hidden Gem: The Windows Disk Management Tool" http://www.informationweek.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=180207718 we looked at a little-known tool built into Windows for creating, formatting, or deleting partitions and drives; changing drive letter assignments and paths; and so on.
In the current article, we look at a slightly nonstandard way of physically adding a drive to an existing, in-use system--- a way I find much easier than the methods recommended by some drive manufacturers.

Although each of these first two columns stands alone, they also form the foundation for our upcoming discussion of an extremely low-cost terabyte server--- a PC that gives you a full 1,000 GB of network-sharable hard drive space in a fast, rock-solid
system, and for only about $500!

But today, get that important second piece of the puzzle over at http://www.informationweek.com/1080/langa.htm . And then stay tuned!