non-repairable clusters and unneeded partitions

I have an older PC with 2 partitions, a 16 G C drive containing the OS, XP,
and a 60 G D drive. The manufacturer shipped it that way, and the C drive has
been running out of space. I haven’t been able to remove the partition
because there are non-repairable broken clusters on the C drive and the hard
drive is now having trouble booting, I suspect because of those clusters.
I’ve been making volume shadow back ups of the C drive, D drive and system
state onto an external drive using ntbackup in XP Home. I’ve been reading
posts here so I know that a new HDD will come with software to transfer the
contents of my old HD to the new one. Here are my questions:

1. Will the partitions also transfer to the new HDD using that software? If
yes, is there anything I can do to stop that?

2.I contacted the PC manufacturer and was told that I can use the Recovery
CDs to install the computer to its original state on a new HDD. That would
give me the option of installing without partitions. Could I then use the
back up on the external drive to install the rest of my programs and files?
Would they require the partitions? (I backed up all files except: task
scheduler, temporary files and system volume information: VSS service
alternate, VSS service DB, VSS default provider, system restore)

3.I’d like to try doing a reformat on the old HDD, wiping out the
partitions, or maybe install the OS on the existing D drive just to see if I
can get a little more use out of it. There are no broken clusters on the D
drive and money is really tight now, everyone in our household has been laid
off work. Is there a way to install the OS on the existing D drive?

4.The only program I’m worried about losing is MS Office Ultimate 2007, my
daughter purchased it as a download so we don’t have the CD. It’s already on
2 of our other computers so if I lose the program in all of this will they
let me download it again to the new HDD? (We have all of the purchase
information) Could I just save the program onto the external HDD so I don’t
have to worry about losing it? And, if yes, how?

I know this is a lot. Thank you in advance for your help.

.

Relevant Pages

  • Whats the Dealio with initrd, etc/fstab, initrd.img inittab, vmlinuz, grub and partitions ???
    ... Allow me to preface with system info, and install and kernel info; ... and a User with password -- so where am I going wrong, ...My HDD is ... all...and I realize partitions that are closer to the spindle give much ...
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  • Re: XP boot process
    ... XP is booting twice as fast. ... I suspect it has to do with fragmentation of certain areas on the HDD. ... I created only a primairy partittion to install XP. ... I created the other partitions with Disk Managment. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.general)
  • Re: non-repairable clusters and unneeded partitions
    ... Will the partitions also transfer to the new HDD using that software? ... CDs to install the computer to its original state on a new HDD. ... A disk without partitions is useless. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.general)
  • Re: Setting up an external hard drive - partioning and sharing issues
    ... Or does disk cloning differ from disk imaging in ... physical internal HDD. ... partitions and proposing to use three of those partitions to contain the ... comprehensive backup system through its disk-cloning capability. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.help_and_support)
  • Re: How to clone boot drive to larger disc with less partitions ?
    ... the number of partitions from 6 to 5. ... it to do other than cloning equal partitions from the old drives. ... I tried Disk Management tool to partition the new drive and that seems ... for organizing your HDD the way you describe... ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.help_and_support)
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