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Newbie looking for access to backup drive
Just aquired a hand-me-down laptop from my nephew. I have reset to factory settings and upgraded to newest versions (XP SP3, Net 4,bios, etc.) Recently ran Belarc advisor. My 40G HDD is failing and I will be cloning/installing a SSD 120G I was saving for a future build. I noticed that my Dell Inspiron E1505 has about 13G of free space. Where is this harddrive located? It shows a size of 13.3G with 13.2 free. Is this drive where my factory settings originated? .1G seems rather small for all the info required for a factory reset. At a loss as to how to utilize this free space, since I can't find a way to move data to its location. Any info would be great. P.S. I know just enough about PC's to be dangerous, so please be kind. hauswulf
hauswulf
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March 17th, 2013 15:00
Thanks for your input Mary. Still not quite getting the capacity issue. Every HDD I have seen lists the capacity on the label and I have never seen one that held more than listed on the label. Always a first, though. Last specs showed C:41.59 (25.53 free) and D:(backup) 13.26 with 13.16 free. Even these numbers don't make sense to me. I have had several (alright, five) beers since my first post.
hauswulf
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March 17th, 2013 15:00
It has been a real terror. Tried Easy Gig III that came with the SSD. Ran it and was tickled pink as the cloning progressed for about twenty minutes, right up until the point it failed showing just five seconds from completion. Ran again with exact same results, seconds before completion. Removed the HDD and took it to a "friend" to clone. He cloned OK but the SSD lost over half its capacity (down to 56G). Contacted Crucial CS (great American English speaking reps. I understood every word) who walked me through the cloning process again with EGIII. Went into advanced menu, clicked 4K alignment and Dell boxes. Failed the same way(after another half-hour I'll never get back) Right up until the final seconds. They have replaced the SSD and have instructed me to call them before I attempt the next cloning. I will heed your warnings. I was going to install W7-32 I had, but the disc/key I purchased wouldn't validate (still fighting that battle for a replacement) on another PC I was upgrading. Still don't understand about the HDD capacity. The Seagate label says 40G, but system says there's another 13G somewhere. I figured it was built into the laptop. This is my first laptop :). Have played around with many desktops, so I assumed I was just ignorant of the laptop workings. Not familiar with TRIM but will research same. Thanks for your fast reply. hauswulf
Mary G
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March 17th, 2013 15:00
There is only one hard drive and that is failing. When the drive fails, the whole drive fails. The 13G of free space is the unused portion of your only hard drive. To Backup you need an external hard drive, disks or thumb drives. I doubt you will be able to add a ssd drive to this old computer. Buy a new hard drive similar to the one you have now to replace the failing one. The factory settings are on a hidden partition on your hard drive that will be gone too when the drive fails.
ejn63
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March 17th, 2013 15:00
Be careful with this model - if it's factory-configured, you CANNOT simply clone the drive because of the presence of a hidden Media Direct partition on the drive (see first link).
IF you want to use an SSD, consider upgrading to Windows 7 -- you DO NOT want to run XP on any SSD, unless the manufacturer of the drive provides a TRIM utility (XP doesn't natively support TRIM, and most drive makers DO NOT provide a TRIM utility for their drives). Without it, XP will thrash any SSD to death in short order.
www.goodells.net/.../hpa-issues.shtml