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From: Dave on 4 Apr 2008 08:46
I have a Sony vaio VGN-SZ4XWN/C laptop (dual core 2 GHz, 2 GB RAM) which
came new with Vista Business and a 120 GB disk. I've since 'upgraded'
to Vista Ultimate.

I later repartitioned the disk into Solaris x86 and Vista, but now wish
to get rid of Vista completely and use Solaris x86 and XP.

I've bought a new disk (300 GB), and intend putting XP and Solaris x86
on the new disk. However, I still have quite a bit of data on the 120 GB
disk I would like to move. What is the best way to do this?

I was thinking of

1) Remove the 120 GB disk from the laptop.
2) Fit 300 GB disk
3) Install XP and Solaris x86 on the new 300 GB disk
4) Put the old 120 GB disk in an external enclosure with USB and/or
firewire.
5) Boot XP on the new machine and copy over the data from the disk in
the external enclosure which has Vista on it.

1-4 are easy to do, but I'm concerned if it will be possible to move
data from a disk that has Vista to one that has XP. I obviously know the
password for the 120 GB disk.


I do internd copying the data over to a newwork too, so I will have two
copies. There's not much point copying programs over.


Are there anything I need to be particulary aware of in changing a
laptop from Vista to XP? I believe Sony have made most/all the drivers
available for XP now. If I cant use the camera or fingerprint reader I
will do without them.
From: Quaoar on 4 Apr 2008 13:11
Dave wrote:
> I have a Sony vaio VGN-SZ4XWN/C laptop (dual core 2 GHz, 2 GB RAM) which
> came new with Vista Business and a 120 GB disk. I've since 'upgraded'
> to Vista Ultimate.
>
> I later repartitioned the disk into Solaris x86 and Vista, but now wish
> to get rid of Vista completely and use Solaris x86 and XP.
>
> I've bought a new disk (300 GB), and intend putting XP and Solaris x86
> on the new disk. However, I still have quite a bit of data on the 120 GB
> disk I would like to move. What is the best way to do this?
>
> I was thinking of
>
> 1) Remove the 120 GB disk from the laptop.
> 2) Fit 300 GB disk
> 3) Install XP and Solaris x86 on the new 300 GB disk
> 4) Put the old 120 GB disk in an external enclosure with USB and/or
> firewire.
> 5) Boot XP on the new machine and copy over the data from the disk in
> the external enclosure which has Vista on it.
>
> 1-4 are easy to do, but I'm concerned if it will be possible to move
> data from a disk that has Vista to one that has XP. I obviously know the
> password for the 120 GB disk.
>
>
> I do internd copying the data over to a newwork too, so I will have two
> copies. There's not much point copying programs over.
>
>
> Are there anything I need to be particulary aware of in changing a
> laptop from Vista to XP? I believe Sony have made most/all the drivers
> available for XP now. If I cant use the camera or fingerprint reader I
> will do without them.

Go with #4. You will be able to do many things with an external drive
enclosure that will make your life easier. I use a full-size SATA
enclosure since it will take both a notebook and desktop SATA HD. With
both notebook SATA and PATA HDs, you will have to remove any adapter on
the drive to make it fit the standard desktop SATA or PATA connector.

Q
From: caveman on 5 Apr 2008 04:38
Quaoar wrote:

>> I was thinking of
>>
>> 1) Remove the 120 GB disk from the laptop.
>> 2) Fit 300 GB disk
>> 3) Install XP and Solaris x86 on the new 300 GB disk
>> 4) Put the old 120 GB disk in an external enclosure with USB and/or
>> firewire.

> Go with #4. You will be able to do many things with an external drive
> enclosure that will make your life easier. I use a full-size SATA
> enclosure since it will take both a notebook and desktop SATA HD. With
> both notebook SATA and PATA HDs, you will have to remove any adapter on
> the drive to make it fit the standard desktop SATA or PATA connector.
>
> Q



My concern is can I access that data ok on the external drive. Remember,
I'm not going to be setting this drive up from XP, but trying to access
the data from XP that is in a partition used by Vista.

The drive will have a Solaris and Vista partitions.

It seems crazy that I am having to change from Vista to XP, but I see no
other sensible choice given the amount of resources Vista uses. I would
think dual core 2 GHz with 2 GB RAM and NVIDA GeForce 7400 GPU should
have been enough for any operating system, but Vista needs more. The
speed, coupled with the fact several programs dont run under Vista
properly, that I have decided to forget vista - depsite even paying for
the upgrade from Business to Ultimate.
From: Dave Martindale on 6 Apr 2008 13:47
caveman <dev.null(a)dev.null.com> writes:

>My concern is can I access that data ok on the external drive. Remember,
>I'm not going to be setting this drive up from XP, but trying to access
>the data from XP that is in a partition used by Vista.

Unless you've encrypted the drive somehow, it should be formatted as
either NTFS or FAT32. XP should have no trouble reading either format
as a USB2 external drive. I don't have any experience with Solaris, but
as long as it can access external USB disks at all, I'd expect it to be
able to read a Solaris-formatted partition on one.

Dave
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