Drive Upgrade Follow-On Question
Fred: Just signed up for the Premium Langa List after freeloading for six years. Figured it was way past time for your great news letter.
Recently you've been talking about adding a larger hard drive which I've just done. I added a Maxtor 120 Gig drive ($40 after a $50 rebate at Office Depot} Connecting the old 40 Gig and the new one I transferred the data using the software enclosed with the new drive to the new drive, disconnected the old and the new drive boots just as it should. My question is this: can I do this in reverse and use the old drive as a backup---which you so highly recommend and I have never done---without losing the data on the old drive which I feel I should keep in case the new one fails? If I can then how would this be done? Thanks for the advice and also for the greatest of letters.
---Allen Weizer
It sounds like you used "cloning" software that came with the new drive to copy the entire contents of the old drive to the new. In that case, no; you would not want to use that same software in reverse, as it might replace the original data on the old drive with a fresh, cloned copy of the new.
But you can use the old drive for backups, no problem. I'd suggest you set the new drive as Master and the old drive as Slave, if you haven't already done so. Reconnect the old drive to the system, using the secondary drive connector if possible (usually, it's the connector closer to the middle of the drive cable; the connector at the end is for the main or primary drive). See the photos and text at http://www.informationweek.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=181502411 for a fuller explanation.
When you reboot, your system should see the old drive and assign it a new drive letter. You'll have instant access to all your original files; and can open new folders there to store backups from the new drive.
But please also note that while this is better than no backup at all, it's not ideal because any software or hardware problem that eats the new drive may well also eat the old; taking your original data and backups with it. It's up to you, but if your data and setup are worth preserving, you might want to take the extra steps to make your backups truly bulletproof: http://langa.com/backups/backups.htm
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