Have two drives, both with Windows, in one PC

[whitesmith]

Hello all,

I was running out of available space on my hard drive so I bought
another one of the same size and installed it in my system alongside
the first. My plan was to put XP on the new drive, which I did, and
remove Windows from the old one at a later date.

Removal has proven more complicated than I thought. My system now
boots from D, the new drive, whose status is reported as "boot" by
Administrative Tools -> Computer Management -> Disk Management. The
same utility reports drive C as "system."

Here's what I need to know:

(1) Can I safely delete the Windows directory on C, even though C is
no longer the boot drive, but is nonetheless regarded by Windows as a
"system" drive?

(2) How can I safely merge Documents and Settings from C to Documents
and Settings on D? Is this step even necessary?

Kudos to anyone who takes time to explain what needs doing.

 

[Ronaldo]

Both installations are regarded as "System installations" the "boot"
identify the "D" installation as the one selected as the default system, but
you can change that in msconfig or system in control panel.

(1) You can safely delete the XP on the C drive after you copy the boot
sector files from D to C because these files are deleted from one system
when you install another in the same computer, after you copy the files,
both systems become bootable and you can remove either HD and boot from the
other. To copy the files, first check in C:\ for Boot.ini, ntldr, and
NTDETECT.COM and only if they are missing, copy them from D. to copy the
files you have to unhide them in Tools\Folder Options\View\ mark "Show all
hidden files and folders" and " unmark "Hide protected system files
(recommended).. next copy the files to C:\ and go to propierties of each
copied file and mark the hidden file and read only boxes.

I would suggest you keep the XP on C drive because it may come handy
if you ever encounter a problem booting from the XP in D drive (and
viceversa).

(2) You can merge some files and folders from Documents and Settings, you
can see wich can be redirected from the profile folder to any location in
any drive and if you select the same partition and folder on both systems,
they will obviously be merged. The following registry key names the
folders that can be redirected and you can probably create the REG_SZ values
to redirect the folders that are not named.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell
Folders

You can also change the default location for saving Office files in
Tools\Options of the application's menu and those that don't have the option
can be redirected with a registry edition as described above and with more
detailes in the following articles.

Folder Redirection.
http://isg.ee.ethz.ch/tools/realmen/det/skel.en.html

User Profiles and Folder Redirection FAQ
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/community/en-us/management/manage_faq.mspx


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[FeMaster]

Hello all,

I was running out of available space on my hard drive so I bought
another one of the same size and installed it in my system alongside
the first. My plan was to put XP on the new drive, which I did, and
remove Windows from the old one at a later date.

Removal has proven more complicated than I thought. My system now
boots from D, the new drive, whose status is reported as "boot" by
Administrative Tools -> Computer Management -> Disk Management. The
same utility reports drive C as "system."

Here's what I need to know:

(1) Can I safely delete the Windows directory on C, even though C is
no longer the boot drive, but is nonetheless regarded by Windows as a
"system" drive?

(2) How can I safely merge Documents and Settings from C to Documents
and Settings on D? Is this step even necessary?

Kudos to anyone who takes time to explain what needs doing.

OK, now that you are thoroughly confused by Ronaldo's post, try this out...
Unplug the old drive (which according to you is drive C. Try booting the
computer with just the new drive connected. If it boots, and everything
looks normal, (all your documents, programs, email, etc.) are OK, then there
is no reason why you couldn't just delete the XP files on the other drive.

When converting over to the new drive (provided the above worked out
correctly) you will need to change the jumper settings on the two drives,
slave to master and vice versa if you have the drives set up that way. If
they are on different IDE ribbons, then switch the two, New drive to Primary
IDE, old drive to Secondary.

That's a good start for now... Give it shot and see what happens.