[friedpooodle]

Hello everybody. I am a frequent computer user and am pretty well rounded when it comes to computer knowledge. I had a problem about 5 months ago and didn't have enough space on my computer for my audio and video files. To solve that I bought an external hardrive that had 120 gigs. I transferred all of those files over and everything was going great. When I bought this I knew that I could not transfer files such as programs like Microsoft Office into it because they need to be on the regular "C:" harddrive.

5 months later and I have problems again. The computuer I'm dealing with is a Dell Inspiron 5000 laptop. It comes with about 5 gigs of space. When Windoes XP Pro takes about 2.5 this doesn't leave me much to play with. I have large programs installed such as Microsoft Office, Photoshop, etc. I only have about 150 mb's of free space left and that doesn't mix well with the performance of the computer.

I was wondering if there was any way to transfer the "C:\Windows" folder over to the external hardrive or maybe the "Program Files" folder. I know that is probably not possible due to the internal harddrive being the primary source in the start up and everything.

That is what brought me to this question. I was wondering if it was possible for me to backup everything on the computer onto the external harddrive, everything including the "C:" drive and all, go into BIOS, and switch the external harddrive to be the primary one. Basically I want to transfer everything from the internal harddrive with only 5 gigs of memory onto the external one with well over 100 gigs and have Windows run on the external harddrive.

Please let me know if this is possible, and if it is, somebody please explain it to me. This would help me out very much and I would be verrry happy.

Thanks.

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hey friedpoodle,

i don't think it's possible to copy everything from your smaller drive to your larger one and have windows start from there, even if you try to configure your bios that way...remember learning from somewhere that an os kinda interacts with your motherboard, so simply copying [even] your Windows files into the other drive might not do it for you...

if you're averse to just doing a fresh windows install on your larger drive[after setting it up as master], why not uninstall all non-windows related programs(photoshop, etc.) and reinstall them on your larger drive? that way you can keep windows all by itself on your current c: drive.

[neverborn]

hey friedpoodle,

i don't think it's possible to copy everything from your smaller drive to your larger one and have windows start from there, even if you try to configure your bios that way...remember learning from somewhere that an os kinda interacts with your motherboard, so simply copying [even] your Windows files into the other drive might not do it for you...

if you're averse to just doing a fresh windows install on your larger drive[after setting it up as master], why not uninstall all non-windows related programs(photoshop, etc.) and reinstall them on your larger drive? that way you can keep windows all by itself on your current c: drive.

[friedpooodle]

Whoaaaa. Can you do that? I don't know why but I have an understanding that everything like a program must be installed to the main "C:" drive as well. I will try this and be very happy if it works.

Could someone verify that that will work by installing programs on an external drive? Thanks.

[neverborn]

oh. missed the 'external' part. anyway just try installing any other program first into your large drive, if that works, well, there you go. leave the microsoft files on the 5 gig. hope it works!

[TakeBK]

Some programs run stand alone ,Some run with shared files.

So you should be able to run them from the other larger drive.I dont know how fast they will run being hooked to a USB.

IMHO I would go get a 40-80GIG internal drive and reload the OS on that along with all your programs.Saw some in the range of $68- 40 GIG / $120- 80GIG depending on the size and which DELL LAP you have.

As days go by everything is getting MUCH bigger these days and are resource hogs.I have a online game and they did an update I had to download it was over 350MB The game itself was 2-GIG which is huge for a PC game alone(Together 1/2 your drive alone).Windows updates are getting larger also.So you probably will eventually run into the same problem again sooner or later even with most everything on the external.

For now try going through ADD/REMOVE Programs and get rid of anything you don't really use.Re-install and test each program you want to keep on the external and if all is fine, do one by one untill you get as many on the external that will run as you can.


Just my 2cents

TakeBK