Karaoke Forums

Hi,

Ok I've got the hd out of my dead desktop and into a case and I have the option of USB or eSATA. Which one is the best choice? I currently have it hooked up with eSATA and it is working

Also, any suggestions on how to clean up the drive? I'd like to get as much space for ripping my cd's and cdg's. It has my old operating system on there which I don't need, as well as pictures and documents which I do. I'll also need to import my address book and emails at some point.

Thanks,
Ken

If by cleaning up, you mean reformat:

my computer > right click the icon of that drive > reformat.

You may want to safe the files that you still need before reformating.

_________________
I can neither confirm nor deny ever having or knowing anything about nothing.... mrscott

Reformatting should not be necessary.

Importing your email and address book depends on the email program you use. I would look in the docs for that.

Once you have done that import, you should be able to just remove every folder on the drive that is not your music. Then once you do an overnight defragmentation run on the drive, it should be as cleaned up as can be.

_________________
[color=#ffff55]Mickey J.[/color]
Alas for those who never sing, but die with all their music in them.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Thanks for the info! Browsing through the system tools I see a disk cleanup as well as disk defrag. Do I need to run the cleanup utility as well, or just the defrag and if so, in what order?

Thanks,
Ken

If you remove all files except your music files, you don't need disk cleanup. All that does is remove library files and other associated system files.

_________________
[color=#ffff55]Mickey J.[/color]
Alas for those who never sing, but die with all their music in them.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Personally what I would do is import all the docs and pics and other files that you want to keep onto the hard drive in the new computer then I would format the old drive, and not just a fast format because that really only changes the name by one letter and all the information is still there.
Do a full format. If you are using XP you can format in either Fat32 or NTFS. NTFS is a better format IMO.
Disc clean up will only remove files that are temp files and not really do much and a defrag would not be necessary if you format the drive.

Hope this helps
Lone Wolf

Can you give a logical reason for formatting?

_________________
[color=#ffff55]Mickey J.[/color]
Alas for those who never sing, but die with all their music in them.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Do you plan on Erasing your old operating system?
What's the New O.S.?

Kind Regards,
sw00000p

When HDD capacity was low a format was absolute to get rid of all the hidden files and make sure the index was clean again (access speed). While it is not that imperative anymore I would still recommend it . I would also do a disc check to get the bad segments out of the index. On some drives I might even do a low level format.

_________________
Join The Karaokle Singers Social Network. Upload Your Music!!

reformating will wipe all information off the drive as it writes 1's or 0's in all spaces on the drive that way you have a fresh clean drive to start with not having to write over old information. When you add new information the drive writes over old information that has been deleted or is in temp files. The drive will first look for empty spots to put you information and then write over spots it where information is temp and will have to defrag to get the drive to run faster. With a clean drive you don't have to do this and if you don't do a lot of deleting the information is in order as you put it on.
Also he didn't say what format the drive is and if it's an older drive with FAT32 the new standard of NTFS is a lot better format.
And depending on size he might just want to dump the whole thing and get a New external drive.

L.W.

Ok, I just did a properties on the drive and it is a 320G HD in NTFS format currently. I am now running Windows Vista 64 bit on my new laptop and although I liked XP I would be deleting it from that drive. I noticed that the drive looks like it has been partitioned with a recovery section taking up space as well that I would no longer need.

Oh yeah, eSATA or USB? The external box that I installed it in gives me both options.

Thanks,
Ken

See, I don't get all this. In the old days, there was such a thing as low-level format. Nowadays, there really is no such thing. Also, hysteresis on these new drives is completely different and the old "bit fatique" no longer applies.

If you defrag your drive, you will have essentially done the same thing as a format and rewrite would do, without nearly the wear and tear.

Having the drive in NTFS vice FAT32 is of very marginal benefit.


Now you have said something that makes sense to me. Keep the old drive as a backup, not only for the music but for the old files, and buy a new one. You can get a 500MB drive for $129 about anywhere.

_________________
[color=#ffff55]Mickey J.[/color]
Alas for those who never sing, but die with all their music in them.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Those recovery sections are usually 4-16G, no? Not much percentage of a 320G drive, and personally I wouldn't go through all the effort to recover that small a section. You could make it into another partition to save copies of your software install files or something.


eSATA will almost always be better performance-wise. It is much less universal, though, and I would pick USB2.0 because you can be guaranteed it will be useful on most machines. Either will be good enough for karaoke applications -- only indexing a song database is performance-sensitive, and you do that infrequently.

_________________
[color=#ffff55]Mickey J.[/color]
Alas for those who never sing, but die with all their music in them.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Well, some stubborn files made the decision for me. I am currently formatting the drive to recover just under 30 Gb of space that Windows was not allowing me to delete.

Anything I need to do after formatting or am I totally clean and ready to go? I really want to play with the demo's that I have downloaded but I didn't want to start ripping any music or cdg's until I had the drive ready for them.

Thanks again for all your help!
Ken

You made the correct decision.. No disrespect to other posters, but many reasons exist to full format and start fresh.

Protected recovery partitions
Operating system files/install files
Old programs, and associated data files
Potential virus/Trojans left on drive
Partition information ie: Primary boot, etc.

You did the right thing..

What Operating System were you using? Unsure if this applies, but with Win2kpro, you have a limitation of high space on hard drives... the limit on it and some earlier XP machines. I think it was 127GB... I was informed by some techies that Maxtor and other hard drive makers had a patch that would work, but NOT for the C drive... so the only fix for that was to partion it!

It was XP and the only partition was for the recovery section. I figure I'll take a suggestion from the board and use that small partition for any karaoke related stuff that is not music and use the main partition for kj and dj music.

Thanks again!
Ken

Yes, the older OS was restricted to 127 Gb, however the "patch" will work on C: as normally, the larger drive is a replacement, and the included CD installs all needed files and copies entire smaller drive to the new larger drive.. No worries, mate..

Thanks for that, Jerry! I tried, but it didn't work for my C drive. For me, it's no big deal, on my home machines, I just had smaller C drives! !

It's called, "RTFM"..

You install the new drive as "D:" and then run the CD.. It transfers all the data to the D: drive, then you switch them..

The new D: drive then becomes the C: drive..

The old C: drive can be used as D: or put on the shelf..

Simple really..