I'm thinking of replacing my C:> (system) drive with an SSD. I foresee two problems with this.

1) I have no more available SATA ports on my motherboard. The current system drive is IDE. I could free up a SATA port if there is another way to connect my CD/DVD burner as I need a new one, mine will no longer burn CDs, although it plays CDs and burns/plays DVDs with no problem.

2) I am really reluctant to nuke and repave the C:> drive, I have a lot of software and drivers installed (in Control Panel, my "Programs and Features") folder shows 109 items, at least 80 of which I would reinstall in a clean system, and my "Downloads" directory has 280 folders of which I would keep at least half.) Can I make a byte for byte copy of my C:> drive to an SSD drive (using an external eSATA dock to make the copy), then replace my old IDE C:> drive with the SATA SSD and have it work? If it does, will Windows see the replacement drive and decide it's now in a different computer and make me jump through hoops with Microsoft to re-authorize it?

I have a bootable Linux Live DVD (Knoppix). Will that make things easier? I would need very detailed and explicit instructions for that option to work for me.

Of course, the rational thing to do would be to get the SSD drive and use that as an excuse to change over to 64-bit Windows 7, but that Nuke and Repave thing is something I want to avoid if possible. As contemptuous as I am of Vista, I have spent enough time tweaking and installing service packs and devising workarounds for some of its shortcomings that it is actually working pretty well for me now.

So, to summarize, can I:
1) Get a CD/DVD burner that will work in an IDE port?
2) Make a byte-for-byte copy (using an external eSATA dock) of my C:> to an SSD?
3) Put the SATA SSD in place of the old C:> IDE drive and have it work as a system drive?
4) Will Microsoft give me trouble about my copy of Windows being on a different hard drive?
5) If 1), 2), 3) and 4) are possible, will a Knoppix Linux Live bootable DVD be of use to me?
6) Would I be crazy to not upgrade to Windows 7 when I do this? (No, I won't switch to Linux, sorry, Mark )

tanstaafl.

1) I'm sure IDE optical drives are still available. They haven't exclusively switched over to SATA to my knowledge. Should be cheap.

2) ans 3) As long as the SSD is larger than the original C: drive, then yes a byte for byte copy should just work (using dd). To make use of the extra space you'll need to resize the partition afterwards. I'm not sure what's the best (free) tool these days to resize NTFS

4) Don't know for sure but you can always try. Worst case you can put the old C: drive back in. As long as it's a properly licensed copy, I don't think MS will have any issues authorising the new hardware particularly if it's XP. I did it just recently using Acronis True Image Home (paid for app) and had no issues.

5) Yes. Boot Knoppix and run dd from the command line. It should be as simple as "dd if=sda of=sdb" where a and b you will need to determine. It may be best to disconnect any other drives whilst doing this to prevent overwriting something else. Don't assume sda would be the original C drive. Sometimes they come up in a funky order. I'd use "hdparm -i /dev/sda" etc to print the details of the drive and then you look at model numbers and serial numbers

6) Not necessarily. There are some things I don't like in Windows 7 that work just fine in XP.

The one concern I'd have is how Windows Vista is going to deal with changing from IDE to SATA for the boot drive. I don't have any recent experience moving Windows between controllers, but it was a not so simple process with XP/Server 2003.

What you propose is, as usual, trivial for Linux users. But you continue to prefer to pay money for your software, and the situation is different there.

For disc-burning, I still have great success with external USB2 connected burners -- so that's one way to free up a SATA slot.

Good luck!

Gag. No wonder people think Linux is difficult.
How about something slightly simpler:

cp /dev/sda /dev/sdb

or even:

cat /dev/sda > /dev/sdb

Not that this will work either, since the SSD is pretty much guaranteed to be smaller than the original mechanical drive.

Cheers

I should have had "dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb" but anyway...

Gag? Come on. They only are marginally less cryptic particularly for someone not used to the command line. Compared to something like Norton Ghost or similar that does it in a GUI I think they are all equally difficult.

Hi.

Another option to using a linux live CD, which will also allow resizing of the drive in the process, is Acronis True Image. Admittedly you have to buy it, but it's not all that expensive, and is a very good backup solution as well.

It has a facility to produce a bootable recovery cd (which is almost certainly based on linux, amusingly) which allows drives to be cloned, amongst other things.

IDE CD/DVD drives are certainly still available, although the range is steadily shrinking. Also, you can get SATA to IDE converters that will allow a SATA device to be used on an IDE port. I have had odd results with some motherboards using these in the past, because of weird BIOS incompatibilities, but if this happens using a 40-way cable rather than an 80-way one seems to cure it, albeit at the cost of slowing things down.

pca

I've had problems getting Windows XP to boot after doing an image clone from one drive to another. If you have your installation media handy, you can clone and then do a "non-destructive re-install" to fix it. Not sure if this is still valid advice on Vista or Win7.

Ah, but I have my software now, already bought and paid for, and am satisfied with it. A quick scan of the non-free software I have shows:

AVG 9.0 (2 licenses)............$ 55...I appreciated the free AVG so much I upgraded though I didn't need to.
dbpoweramp ripper...............$ 36...Much more polished and faster than EAC.
Driver Detective................$ 40...Expired now, I won't renew it.
Hyperterminal Private Edition...$ 60...Regular HT doesn't work well with empeg.
Infothek Scan 11................$ 00...This was purchased for me by my employer, list cost $80.
Microsoft Office 2003...........$ 00...Employer (site license), they said I could keep it.
MP3 Tag Studio..................$ 19...So useful, no way was I going to deprive Magnus of his two sawbucks.
Nero 7..........................$ 30...Older version came bundled with DVD burner, upgrade -->7 was ~$30.
Quake III Arena.................$ 40...and worth every penny! Bought it the day it came out.
Rosetta Stone Spanish...........$395...Expensive, but necessary.
Total Recorder Professional.....$ 30...For use with my professional recording studio.
Tunebite v6.....................$ 30...For removing DRMs from audio books downloaded from the library.
TurboFloorPlan 3D...............$ 80...I have spent hundreds of hours with this program designing my house.
WM Recorder.....................$ 30...Semi-satisfactory program for capturing internet video and audio.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Total cost of bought software...$885...For five years on this computer, plus some from previous computers.

I probably have well over 100 other applications installed, nothing pirated, mostly applets and utilities like Adobe Reader, Auslogic Defrag, ClipTrak, Emplode, Google Earth, ICQ, memtest, Microsoft ICE, Recuva, TweakUI, ZDoom etc. Above is just tip of the iceberg. So under $1000 for my software costs is not unreasonable, and even on a Linux system I would still have had to pay for most of it, as I don't think there would be free Linux substitutes for dbpoweramp, Rosetta Stone, Tunebite, TurboFloorPlan, Quake III, etc.

Doh! Of course. Brilliant idea, Mark, I'm embarrassed I didn't think of that myself. I don't imagine there would be a speed penalty with USB, as the bottleneck would be in the burner hardware itself. Of course, I already have 15 USB cables attached to my computer (counting the two cables daisy-chaining the pair of 7-port hubs) but some of those are just occasional use (like all the proprietary cables for three different cameras, iPods, iPhones, Kindles, GPSs, etc.) so I can find room for one more cable easily enough. WHY do manufacturers use proprietary USB cables? But that's a topic for another thread, I guess.

As always, thanks, Mark!

tanstaafl.

As it turns out, that is not the case.

My IDE system drive is an 80GB IDE drive. (We built this computer back in the days when 80 GB was considered useful, and 300 GB was huge. I am now up to 6.7 TB of space!) I will replace it with a 128 GB SSD.

Would you be willing to recommend a particular SSD drive for this application?

tanstaafl.

Command lines don't scare me, I have been comfortable with a C:> prompt since the 1970s. In the 1980s I was pretty adept with a Xenix system (this was before the days of *nix GUIs) and in years past I was a demon with DOS batch files. Then Windows came along and I got lazy and I have forgotten most of what I knew then.

tanstaafl.

True, there still anything out there that is quite as good a ripper/auto tagger as dbPowerAmp.

A quick google suggests that dbPowerAmp works just fine using Wine.

I've had success with GParted Live. It might even support copying the disk first, but don't quote me on that.

Doug, have you checked out Quake Live? It's a free version of Quake III that works through your browser via a plugin.

It also works within VMWare

So, let me get this straight. I should get rid of Windows and run Linux so I can run my Windows programs under Linux in a Windows emulator?

I guess I'm just a Luddite at heart. I have a good-performing Windows system with the software I want in it, running quite well with good stability and speed. There are things that Linux will do more easily (such as cloning a system drive!) but I just don't do those things very often, and when I need to do them there are usually Windows workarounds, albeit sometimes clumsy ones. I have too much invested (time, money, learning curve, etc.) in Windows to capriciously switch to another OS for what I perceive to be marginal gains.

If I were starting from scratch (rather than being chained down by more than 30 years of computer experience) I would seriously consider Linux. But, you know how it goes. Old dogs, new tricks...

tanstaafl.

ps: I claim another bbs first usage for the word "capricious".

10 years too late

http://empegbbs.com/ubbthreads.php/ubb/s...ursday#Post8710

The Intel SSD's are still amongst the best. Then there's the ones based on the Indilinx chipset like the OCZ Vertex or the ones based on the Sandforce chipset (like OCZ Vertex 2). Avoid all others.

Also keep in mind: if you clone a regular HD to an SSD, almost certain your SSD drive's partitions will not be aligned. Make sure to align them properly before continuing to use it. Performance will be degraded immensely if you don't.

No... Wine Is Not an Emulator -- it's a re-implementation of the .dll libraries. That said, my response was less to you, than to Andy. There may be no open-source equivalent as richly featured as dbPowerAmp, but since the original works under Wine, it's not an argument for keeping someone off of Linux. Just because the OS is open-source doesn't mean you aren't allowed to use paid-for/closed-source apps on it.

FWIW, I note that you left off the cost of the operating system in your list of things you paid money for. And, if you want to be fully compliant, you really ought to ensure that the terms of the site license allow you to continue using that software once you're no longer part of the "site". Just because they said you can use it doesn't mean the license permits such use.

But then you still have to pay the Microsoft Tax.

Completely unneeded.

Faster than EAC because it doesn't use the secure ripping methods that EAC does. Which are largely not needed. There are any number of free CD ripping utilities for Linux. I'm not aware of any that support EAC's secure ripping methods, but I haven't looked in a while, either.

Unnecessary

Waste of money, even under Windows. There are better free options for virtually any OS. Under Windows, I use PuTTY for a terminal emulator these days.

There are a variety of scanner frontends for Linux. Don't know what might be special about this one.

Um, that's in violation of Microsoft's license. OpenOffice.org works just fine. There are certainly differences. I find that they work in OO.o's favor about half the time and in Office's favor about half the time. (And mere irrelevancies the "other" half the time.) There are other free options, too.

Unlike many of the other programs here, this won't work under Wine, because it's written using self-modifying code (!). I had a problem with it because of that and Magnus basically told me to take a flying leap. That said, there are a variety of free tagging programs for Linux.

Wouldn't touch this one with a ten foot pole under Windows anymore, if I could help it. They keep adding bloat while making the burning part seemingly worse. Again, a variety of options under Linux. Free options for Windows, too.

Released for Linux shortly after the Windows version came out.

You got me here. AFAIK, there is not any equivalent to Rosetta Stone.

There are free audio editors. I have no idea what might be special about this one.

Just an analog hole exploiter. I'm sure there's something equivalent, again, for free.

Dunno much about architectural CAD for Linux.

I don't have much knowledge in this area, either, but I have seen things in the past.

Available for Linux for free, though there are better PDF viewers for both Linux and Windows

Unneeded under Linux, better free options for Windows.

There are a variety of such utilities for Linux, including one that's a stock part of the GUI.

JEmplode, though I do find that Emplode tends to work better.

Available for Linux

Any number of IM apps for Linux

Not specific to any OS.

The photo stitcher. I have no knowledge here. I imagine Mark does.

There are undelete applications, though backup is always preferable.

I can assure you that you can tweak more of the UI on Linux than you can on Windows.

There are a huge variety of Doom engines for Linux.

You might be right with those.

You're definitely wrong here, though.

tl;dr version:

Just try it. There are versions of Linux you can run without making any sort of destructive change to your computer, and even versions that can run while you're running Windows.

Doug, I know you like to fiddle. It continues to amaze me that this is one area in which you seem to have no desire to fiddle.

That isn't correct.

dbPowerAmp includes all the same secure ripping methods that EAC does. It also includes AccurateRip which was created by the guy behind dbPowerAmp (EAC also optionally uses AccurateRip).

AccurateRip is the key to fast and accurate ripping. When you have it setup correctly dbPowerAmp does its first rip with the fastest method, compares the rip against the AccurateRip database and if the rip matches then it doesn't need to worry about using the slow securing ripping methods.

EAC can also use AccurateRip, but the whole process is much more manual, the joy of dbPowerAmp is that it automates the while rip fast, check, rerip if needed iteration process.

dbPowerAmp also has access to much better meta data than I have seen in other rippers, it really does do a better job of getting the tags filled in right.

I believe there is one Linux ripper that uses AccurateRip, though I forget which one and if I remember correctly it took a more EAC approach than a dbPowerAmp one.

Not that I'm a big proponent of desktop Linux, but I never did understand the argument of "I've been on Windows for ages, other things are hard to learn." Windows hasn't exactly stayed the same, and has had some major shifts. Going from just a fancy shell on top of DOS (Win 1-3) to a fancy shell on DOS with a completely reworked UI (95-ME), to a completely different underbelly (XP), and then more underbelly and GUI changes going into Vista and 7. My experience editing PIF files from the 3.x days does me little good now, and same for all that Config.sys tweaks. Even troubleshooting and maintaining the various versions has changed dramatically over the past many years.

I definitely don't regret my switch away from Windows. It's not something I've solidly replaced just due to my gaming habits and nature of my job, but overall I'm glad I made the jump. Though I can't comment much on the switch to Linux, as it's something I've never really considered for my desktop OS. I'm happy with it as a server OS.

Fair enough. Bad assumption on my part. I think the Linux ripper you're thinking of is Rubyripper. Seems that dbPowerAmp's metadata is culled from a number of different sources and compared for accuracy. Good idea.

How about Kingston? I'd always heard that their memory chips were among the best.

Isn't that an XP problem that doesn't arise with Vista and later versions? I know that the documentation that came with my 2-TB drives said I had to align them or use a jumper to force alignment if I was using XP, but that Vista and Windows 7 did not require it. Perhaps the SSDs are different?

tanstaafl.

I guess I just don't see the advantage of spending a lot of time, trouble, and money to change something I am satisfied with. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." I am not a bleeding-edge sort of person, I don't anticipate my computer needs changing significantly in the future. The newest game on my computer is eight years old, my office software is seven years old. My computer does what I want, is reliable, and I know and understand and have already paid for the software that is in it, so what advantage to me is it to give all that up just so I can be even more geeky than I am now? (Not that that would be a bad thing.) Probably there are Linux solutions for virtually everything I currently have in my computer, but would they work better than what I have now and understand?

tanstaafl.

Oops -- my bad. I meant "capriciously", not "capricious"

tanstaafl.

It does. Of course most of the metadata sources it uses require a paid annual licence, which I guess open source rippers wouldn't be keen to use.