Tools for Backing Up Your Hard Drive - Faster Transfer Methods: Hard Disks
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The following are the fastest ways of transferring data and are, not surprisingly, the most used:
- Hard Disk to hard disk copying
- Copying over a LAN
Hard disk to hard disk copying: There is nothing hard or macho about the hard disk. It’s one of the most fragile parts in any computer and, unlike the RAM or the CPU, is very sensitive to shock damage. Fortunately hard disks have matured from early versions, which had to be “locked” prior to doing something daring, like moving the PC. Locking involved securing the reading heads so they didn’t trash about damaging the sensitive data storage magnetic disks. Hard disks are a lot “harder” now and, though they still need to be handled with respect, removing a hard disk from an older machine to plug it into the new one long enough to copy the data over isn’t a high risk activity.
There are some obvious limitations to this exercise particularly if one of the machines is a laptop, if there’s a SCSI drive involved, or if the new PC has tamper proof warranty seals. Let’s first look at the usual abbreviations used in storage. IDE (also called ATAPI, DMA, UDMA, PATA, or parallel ATA just to be confusing) is the common or garden hard disk. SCSI (also using terms like Ultra 160, Ultra 320, LVD, etc.) and the newer Serial ATA (SATA) are others. As SCSI is rarely used in home PCs, so we’ll concentrate on IDE and SATA.
IDE: The most common occurrence is fortunately the easiest to work with – where both source and target disks are IDE. In these cases the connectivity itself is easily achieved by removing the source PC’s hard disk and plugging it into the target PC as the second drive, disabling any other IDE devices like DVD drives if there aren’t enough IDE connectors. A brief note on file systems is in order.
About file sytems: All hard disks have to be partitioned and formatted before use. In computers with Windows installed, there are two main types of partitions: the File Allocation Table (FAT) and NT File System (NTFS). FAT 32 – and it’s older cousin FAT 16 – are found in Windows 95/98/98SE/ME and XP systems and NTFS is commonly found in Windows NT/2000/2003/XP. How the FAT differs from the NTFS is beyond the scope of this article but it’s worth bearing in mind two things:
- An NTFS file system can read a FAT16 or FAT32 partition but a FAT partition cannot read an NTFS one.
- A FAT32 partition can be converted to an NTFS partition without loss of data or programs. So if Windows XP was installed on a FAT32 partition in the new PC it can be converted to NTFS to read an older NTFS hard disk. But once converted to NTFS the partition can’t be converted back to FAT.
*Note: Exploring the Linux and BSD file systems is beyond the scope of this article.
SATA: SATA is a newer technology and older PCs are unlikely to have SATA disks. However, PCs with SATA hard disks will also have IDE connectors and an old IDE hard disk should feel perfectly at home in a new PC. When working the other way and plugging a SATA hard disk into a PC that has only IDE disk/s appropriate SATA drivers for that motherboard may need to be installed on the IDE disk so it can recognise the SATA drive.
SCSI: SCSI drives can’t be used in a new PC unless the PC has a SCSI controller. If it is a server grade machine it may have a SCSI controller 
on the motherboard and if it’s not then a PCI SCSI controller salvaged from the old PC may do the trick. Note that really old SCSI controllers are ISA and won’t fit in new PCs which tend to not have any ISA slots.
A note about RAID: If either the old PC or the new one uses RAID a little familiarity with how RAID works will go a long way. You could damage a RAID array and lose all your data with a few less than judicious key strokes in the setup menu. (See the article RAID: Not Such a Clever Idea for Your Home PC for more information.)
Next: Faster Transfer Methods: LAN and Other Methods >>
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