External Hard Drive question

[1984]

Ok, today I bought another external hard drive (500 gb-western digital -230 bucks!).

 

So my internal hard drive is only 40 gb, and is almost 6 years old-and my hard drive software says that it is 33% degraded-and shows the newer ones to be in great condition.

 

So i used Acronis and made an image of my internal one, and put it on one of my 250 gb external hard drives (follow me here, im getting to the point).

 

Now another one of my 250 gb externals has been partitioned into a 100 gb and a 150 gb hard drive.

 

What I would like to do is this:

 

1- Take the 40 gb drive out and use it as an external one (so if it fails, not much info on it, and not as big of a loss).

 

2- Put the partitioned 250 gb drive as an internal one (after transferring the data to the 500 gb external one).

 

3- But I would like to "wipe" the partitions off of what is currently on it, and make a 50 gb partition (or smaller maybe) for the operating system and a few files and such, and then keep the other 200 gb internally for easy access (i am assuming the data would be accessed faster internally than via a usb 2 connection-is this true?

 

4- Transfer the Acronis image to the 250 gb (which will now have the 50 gb partition) and use this as the internal hard drive with all operating system information.

 

So can all of this be done without a huge headache?

 

How do I physically get the Acronis image of the operating system to be "on" the new hard drive? What I mean is, what is the EXACT process? I am not sure if it is a "drag and drop" sort of thing, or if the 40 gb still has to be internally connected, or if it can be removed or whathaveyou. Can someone help me out?

 

Basically I want to end up with a newer drive internally, with more gb on the inside of case, and the 250, 500, and the old 40 gb all hitched up via usb 2 externally.

 

Thanks guys!

[DennisD]

Have I got my maths right here? 1,040gb.

 

How long would it take to do a scan on that?

 

I've got an 80gb HD, and I've been planning to make just a 10gb partition, but I keep putting it off in case I screw things up.

 

Your plan makes mine look like a walk in the park. In fact your plan makes me think I should just invest in an external HD, and partition that.

 

Good luck mate, I hope you get it all up and running.

[1984]

no takers on this? ive been too busy to actually do much of this. but i did move all info to the 500gb drive so the other two are empty right now...

[TheFiresInTheSky]

didnt have time to read all the way through but i think i could figure it out. i believe with images you have to install windows on the one you want the primary to be, install the image software, then use the software to transfer the image to the drive. wait, how big is the image? maybe you can boot up to it?