I just bought a case to turn one of my harddrives into an external hdd.

Can I use this external harddrive as my primary harddrive for my 2001 Sony Vaio laptop?

Sony's grand wisdow was to make the harddrive on my laptop into 2 partitions, one in FAT32 and NTFS (what ever that means).

 

yeah you should be able to use it as the primary drive as long as the jumper setting and bios is set properly. im not too familiar with laptops so i dont know if jumper setting can be changed on the internal drive yet setting it up through bios should suffice. but may i ask why you want to do this...if you want more space you can just leave the external drive as a secondary and reformat the internal drive into one single partition. if you have more ?'s feel free to ask im sure i can walk you through anything.

 

I doubt it, most likly be pretty slow if you could. FAT32 is format for Windows 98 and others, NSFS is the hd format used by XP, maybe others as well.

 

i dont see it making the pc any slower, being that for the most part the harddrive has little to do with the speed of the PC. You are however correct the FAT32 is used in older windows operating systems while NTFS is used in newer applications such as NT, windows 2000, and XP. while im not totally sure that the external drive can be set as a primary drive i dont see why it couldnt be set as a secondary drive without lowering performance.

 

an ide cable is WAY faster than usb 1 or 1.1.

sorta true, but all the programs and what not are stored on the harddrive, if you slow down the connection to the hard drive, then accessing files and programs will take that much longer

Ben,
You're computer might not be setup to "see" usb devices before windows starts up, in that case, youre screwed.

This is assuming the external case connects via usb, although im sure the same thing applies to firewire connections.

 

Just because the bios will allow you to boot from a USB device does not necessarily mean you can boot from the external hard drive. My laptop is about a year old and I can boot from an external USB floppy but not an external USB hard drive. I've tried it.

 

you do have a point there, either way i just want to know what your main goal here is sierraben either to add more storage, or what but just using the external hard drive as your primary drive doesnt make sense when you could just reformat the internal hard drive into one ntfs partition and then add your external for storage if you wish.

-aj

 

The previous owner of my laptop couldn't set up the harddrive for NTFS only.

The Sony discs automatically partitions the harddrive; as told by him.

My laptop is running on XP Home. It also has USB 1.1 only.

Also the laptop's harddrive is only 14 gigs. Not much by todays standard.

I had to delete some programs to make room on the FAT32 side of the harddrive; and now I want to reinstall them, but not sure if I'll have the room.

Worst comes to worst, I can always buy a bigger harddrive for it.

But they're so pricey for a laptop.

 

I'd just buy an internal hard drive, and scrap sonys recovery discs, or just upgrade the laptop completely

 

Buy yourself an OEM version of Windows XP (Professional) , boot from that XP CD, reformat your hard drive, go to Sony's website and download (on another computer if necessary) the necessary drivers to bring your laptop back up to specs. The XP CD might have the necessary drivers to at least get you back online to fetch the other required drivers...if not, as stated before, go online with another computer, retrieve the necessary drivers and install them via a burned CD or floppy. As for finding the OEM Windows software...google "OEM Windows XP Professional"...this will result in many hits. I found it for $119.95 pretty quick...you can probably get it cheaper, but it's worth it to have it. Then you're not a slave to the stupid restore disks and how SONY wants that laptop's hard drive configured. Just my .02.

Just did another search...bizrate.com shows the price variance from $65 to $198...so that gives you an idea of how inexpensive it can be.

 

jake00 and 78explorer are absolutely right...i was heading there next just get yourself a copy of xp and forget the sony stuff it'll make things much easier.
good luck

-aj

 

Ben: Look for a PM from me on this.

 

Wise are those who download all the upgrade drivers, updates, and software they want BEFORE nuking their current install.
Burn to CD and you are good to go. At least get the network card (or modem if on dialup) driver and either connect through a router or download a software firewall so your machine doesn't get trashed by an open connection to the net.
If you don't do very demanding stuff with the laptop, a ram and hard disk upgrade will be great for usability.

 

Why not just network the 2? I've got a wireless router with a wireless card in my laptop and a tower that is plugged directly into the router. My laptop runs XP and tower runs 98 (small footprint). I've got 3 HD's in the tower and have enabled file and print sharing on both PC's. Works pretty good. Plus, I got the router and wireless card on ebay for $30. Only bad thing is that it's 802.11b, so my connection speed to my router from my laptop is only 11 Mbps. You could get an 802.11g setup and connect at something like 54 Mbps.

With the different drive formats, NTFS and FAT32, you may run into issues just wanting to connect to them not being networked. Say you have 2 hard drives in 1 PC. One is FAT32 and the other is NTFS. If your primary drive is the NTFS drive with Windows XP, 2000, etc, you will be able to see the other drive and it's contents OK if it is set as a slave drive. Now, if your primary drive is the NTFS drive with something like Windows 98, 95, ME, etc, you will not be able to see the NTFS drive.

Nutshell is that a NTFS formatted drive can see and read a FAT32 drive, but a FAT32 formatted drive cannot see or read a NTFS formatted drive.

Clear as mud? I may be missing the point of the post altogether. If so, I apologize and ask that you disregard the ramblings of a tired guy.