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Battle Monkey of Zardoz

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Windoze 7 question
« on: February 18, 2010, 12:04:27 PM »
Being a computer dummy, I was able to get a dual boot, XP and 7, to work. But did something way wrong during the partition stage. I had wanted to split my 500gb HD almost down the middle. 225 for XP and 225 for 7. I ended up with 450 for xp and 25 for 7. And confused as hell.

So, I remembered Wubi. I used to have unbutu Installed on a 500 gb toshiba USB drive. Completely seperate of my system. So, can that be done with Windows 7?  Because I'm damn tired of installing and formating then reinstalling, getting the updates. It's a long pain in the ass.

I really have no complaints about 7, except it won't run some games
I like to play sometime (Homeworld2) and it has problems with some of my oilfield work software, most of which will run under compatibility mode or virtual xp, but it's damned slow and hit or miss.

So. Can it be done?  Installing Windows 7 on a 500GB USB toshiba HD?  Or am I stuck with xp pro.
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AZRedhawk44

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Re: Windoze 7 question
« Reply #1 on: February 18, 2010, 12:24:24 PM »
Yes, it can be done.  Most modern BIOSes can boot from a USB device.

It ain't gonna be very responsive, though.  And gawd help you if your USB host controller driver decides to go into power save mode while the OS is running.

Were it me, and I had no significant data on it, I would:

Try to re-size the existing partitions with some sort of open source disk partitioner.

If that failed, I'd wipe the drives and start over again, paying careful attention to the partition settings when installing XP and Win7.
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Battle Monkey of Zardoz

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Re: Windoze 7 question
« Reply #2 on: February 18, 2010, 12:38:31 PM »
AZREDHAWK44

I may ask to call you to set up a dual boot.

I never had a problem with unbutu going to USB power save mode. But with my luck. It will happen.

I still don't know what went wrong on my last attempt. I partitioned the space correctly using the xp disk. But when the final product was at hand. I had both, both would dual boot. But 25 gb of total space on 7 was a real bummer.
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“We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.”

Abraham Lincoln


With the first link the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably.

RocketMan

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Re: Windoze 7 question
« Reply #3 on: February 18, 2010, 06:31:09 PM »
I'm with AZRedhawk on this one.  Get a good partitioner and resize the partitions.   Shrink the XP to 225 GB or whatever you want it to be, and upsize the Windows 7 partition accordingly.  If you choose the partitioning software properly, it will do the job and you won't need to reinstall either version of Windows.
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Conservatives see George Orwell's "1984" as a cautionary tale.  Progressives view it as a "how to" manual.

My wife often says to me, "You are evil and must be destroyed." She may be right.

Liberals believe one should never let reason, logic and facts get in the way of a good emotional argument.

Battle Monkey of Zardoz

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Re: Windoze 7 question
« Reply #4 on: February 19, 2010, 12:47:13 AM »
Alright.  What do you Guru's suggest on Partitioning Software.  Free software would be great, but I am able to purchase if needed.
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“We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.”

Abraham Lincoln


With the first link the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably.

sanglant

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Re: Windoze 7 question
« Reply #5 on: February 19, 2010, 12:57:34 AM »
just so you know, if you have an SATA MB. a eSATA drive will run at the same speed as an internal drive. =)
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Battle Monkey of Zardoz

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Re: Windoze 7 question
« Reply #6 on: February 19, 2010, 01:09:01 AM »
Um, ok..  I am a computer idiot.  I have no clue about what you just posted. ???
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“We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.”

Abraham Lincoln


With the first link the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably.

RocketMan

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Re: Windoze 7 question
« Reply #7 on: February 19, 2010, 01:09:07 AM »
I use an earlier flavor of Partition Manager.  Not free, but not expensive, either.  There are some good free tools out there, but I haven't used any of them as yet.  Some of the other folks might chime in with their preferences.
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If there really was intelligent life on other planets, we'd be sending them foreign aid.

Conservatives see George Orwell's "1984" as a cautionary tale.  Progressives view it as a "how to" manual.

My wife often says to me, "You are evil and must be destroyed." She may be right.

Liberals believe one should never let reason, logic and facts get in the way of a good emotional argument.

erictank

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Re: Windoze 7 question
« Reply #8 on: February 19, 2010, 01:20:22 AM »
Quote from: Battle Monkey of Zardoz on February 19, 2010, 01:09:01 AM
Um, ok..  I am a computer idiot.  I have no clue about what you just posted. ???

If your computer has a motherboard with an eSATA port, there are external hard drives which can use those connections and run at the same speed as the internal drive, rather than the much-slower speed of the USB-type external drives.  You will be able to tell if your computer has this capability by looking at the documentation, especially that for the motherboard, which will (or SHOULD) show you a picture of what the connector looks like.  The connector port may also be labelled on the actual computer case.

For example - on my HP laptop, vintage early 2009, one of my USB ports is actually a combined USB2.0/eSATA port (and is labelled as such), which I hadn't known could be done prior to buying that computer.  Never used it to plug in an external SATA drive, but it's kind of nice to know that I *COULD*. 
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Perd Hapley

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Re: Windoze 7 question
« Reply #9 on: February 19, 2010, 01:46:04 AM »
Battle Monkey,

Despite my own computer idiocy, I have re-sized partitions many times, without incident, by running Ubuntu from the CD.  I'm guessing you have an Ubuntu disk around somewhere.  If not, you can download it, or ask them to mail you one.  I think the partition editor is called Partition Editor, and is under System Tools. 

Because it loads faster, I just used Slitaz (like Ubuntu, but lighter) to re-partition my own XP/7 dual boot system.  It almost screwed things up, but Win7 simply instructed me to use my Win7 disk to repair things.  Which it did very quickly. 

And as a final note, shouldn't you partition about 200 or 300 GBs for documents/music/pictures/video?   :police:



*because the evil Rocket Man told me to download OphCrack
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Re: Windoze 7 question
« Reply #10 on: February 19, 2010, 01:55:56 AM »
Yep. I have a unbutu disk here. Will give it a try.

As far as having an esata USB port, my laptop is a Dell Inspiron 9400. I'll dig up my documentation and check, but I don't think it has one.

I don't know where I messed up the last time. I used gparted
software. And remember I'm a computer idiot. I have. 500GB HDD. I created 2 unformated partitions. Installed XP on one. Ran as expected. Installed 7 on the other, installed but showed only 25'GB of space for the entire 7 install.  Don't know where I went went.

Fistful. I'll give your suggestion a go.
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“We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.”

Abraham Lincoln


With the first link the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably.

Perd Hapley

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Re: Windoze 7 question
« Reply #11 on: February 19, 2010, 03:09:48 AM »
Because, clearly, between Redhawk, RocketMan, and others present, I am the stand-out computer genius.  :laugh:
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RocketMan

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Re: Windoze 7 question
« Reply #12 on: February 19, 2010, 03:13:34 AM »
Gentlemen, we have created a monster.
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If there really was intelligent life on other planets, we'd be sending them foreign aid.

Conservatives see George Orwell's "1984" as a cautionary tale.  Progressives view it as a "how to" manual.

My wife often says to me, "You are evil and must be destroyed." She may be right.

Liberals believe one should never let reason, logic and facts get in the way of a good emotional argument.

Perd Hapley

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Re: Windoze 7 question
« Reply #13 on: February 19, 2010, 04:43:08 AM »
Not a real monster.  More of a furry little Sesame Street monster. 
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Battle Monkey of Zardoz

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Re: Windoze 7 question
« Reply #14 on: February 19, 2010, 04:51:10 AM »
Quote
More of a furry little Sesame Street monster


Like a "Tribble"

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“We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.”

Abraham Lincoln


With the first link the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably.

RocketMan

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Re: Windoze 7 question
« Reply #15 on: February 19, 2010, 05:13:03 AM »
Yes, but there was trouble with tribbles.
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If there really was intelligent life on other planets, we'd be sending them foreign aid.

Conservatives see George Orwell's "1984" as a cautionary tale.  Progressives view it as a "how to" manual.

My wife often says to me, "You are evil and must be destroyed." She may be right.

Liberals believe one should never let reason, logic and facts get in the way of a good emotional argument.

MikeB

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Re: Windoze 7 question
« Reply #16 on: February 19, 2010, 05:37:35 AM »
Windows 7 can re-size partitions without any additional tools. Right click on my computer on the desktop or computer in the start menu, select manage. Go to disk management and click on the hard disk in question. Then if you right click on the partitions you will be able to shrink the one partition and then extend the other.
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Re: Windoze 7 question
« Reply #17 on: February 19, 2010, 08:03:33 AM »
Tried that when I messed up and only had a 25gb 7 partition. It didn't work.
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“We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.”

Abraham Lincoln


With the first link the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably.

AZRedhawk44

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Re: Windoze 7 question
« Reply #18 on: February 19, 2010, 11:12:56 AM »
Quote from: MikeB on February 19, 2010, 05:37:35 AM
Windows 7 can re-size partitions without any additional tools. Right click on my computer on the desktop or computer in the start menu, select manage. Go to disk management and click on the hard disk in question. Then if you right click on the partitions you will be able to shrink the one partition and then extend the other.

Oh Teh Noez!

Sumwon sujestid him yoozes teh windoez toolz!

OMG!  =D

You haven't been on APS long enough to know that anything worth doing... should be done with an Ubuntu boot CD.

 [popcorn]
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"But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain - that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist."
--Lysander Spooner

I reject your authoritah!

Brad Johnson

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Re: Windoze 7 question
« Reply #19 on: February 19, 2010, 11:15:39 AM »
Quote from: RocketMan on February 19, 2010, 05:13:03 AM
Yes, but there was trouble with tribbles.

Can we beam him somewhere?  That would be fun.  :laugh:

Brad
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Gewehr98

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Re: Windoze 7 question
« Reply #20 on: February 19, 2010, 11:16:50 AM »
Quote
More of a furry little Sesame Street monster. 
   :O

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RocketMan

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Re: Windoze 7 question
« Reply #21 on: February 19, 2010, 02:37:34 PM »
Quote from: Brad Johnson on February 19, 2010, 11:15:39 AM
Can we beam him somewhere?  That would be fun.  :laugh:

Brad

How about we beam him into Gewehr98's basement, where he'll be "a no tribble at 'tall."
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If there really was intelligent life on other planets, we'd be sending them foreign aid.

Conservatives see George Orwell's "1984" as a cautionary tale.  Progressives view it as a "how to" manual.

My wife often says to me, "You are evil and must be destroyed." She may be right.

Liberals believe one should never let reason, logic and facts get in the way of a good emotional argument.

sanglant

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Re: Windoze 7 question
« Reply #22 on: February 19, 2010, 03:23:20 PM »
Quote from: Battle Monkey of Zardoz on February 19, 2010, 01:09:01 AM
Um, ok..  I am a computer idiot.  I have no clue about what you just posted. ???
it's already been said better(thanks Eric =D), but i wanted to say. sorry about that, i wasn't in the best shape and was just trying to get it said. :facepalm: here's a link with a benchmark. it throws in USB3 to. :O but it's just now showing up in high end motherboards. [tinfoil]
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MikeB

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Re: Windoze 7 question
« Reply #23 on: February 20, 2010, 04:26:19 AM »
Quote from: AZRedhawk44 on February 19, 2010, 11:12:56 AM
Oh Teh Noez!

Sumwon sujestid him yoozes teh windoez toolz!

OMG!  =D

You haven't been on APS long enough to know that anything worth doing... should be done with an Ubuntu boot CD.

 [popcorn]

Forget Ubuntu, takes to long to boot. System Rescue CD is much faster.

http://www.sysresccd.org/Main_Page

Besides Ubuntu Boot CD's don't have the passw tool installed by default, what good is a Linux boot CD that won't let you clear lost Windows passwords.
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