Moving the OS to another partition.

[bhk]

I wish to move the XP Home OS from one partition on disk 0 to the primary
partition on disk 1. Is there a simple way of doing this or does one have to
re-install again from scratch, please?
By way of explanation, the computer in question is an old one with a small
12GB HD and was supplied with Win 98 installed on C drive. Four years ago I
bought a retail XP disk and attempted to do a clean install. For some reason
it would not install on C drive over the original OS but installed itself on
a logical partition D resulting in a dual boot system. Now D partition is
nearly full and there is little room for movement. There is a second 80GB HD
installed - connected via a Promise Ultra 100 card. This has around 50GB of
free space on the first primary partition and it seems to me more sensible
to install the OS there - if it will work.
This is not the main computer in the house but is used by my wife as a
glorified typewriter!
Any advice will be welcomed.
Thanks
Kenneth

 

[Rich Barry]

Kenneth, there are a few good programs that will let you do this.
Partition Magic and Acronis are two. If you move XP to the D: partition on
disk 1 it would make it much more reliable a transfer. Unlike Win98, WinXP
doesnt care what partition you install it to. Check here for more info
http://www.thefreecountry.com/utilities/backupandimage.shtml

 

[Patrick Keenan]

I wish to move the XP Home OS from one partition on disk 0 to the primary
partition on disk 1. Is there a simple way of doing this or does one have
to re-install again from scratch, please?
By way of explanation, the computer in question is an old one with a small
12GB HD and was supplied with Win 98 installed on C drive. Four years ago
I bought a retail XP disk and attempted to do a clean install. For some
reason it would not install on C drive over the original OS but installed
itself on a logical partition D resulting in a dual boot system. Now D
partition is nearly full and there is little room for movement. There is a
second 80GB HD installed - connected via a Promise Ultra 100 card. This
has around 50GB of free space on the first primary partition and it seems
to me more sensible to install the OS there - if it will work.
This is not the main computer in the house but is used by my wife as a
glorified typewriter!
Any advice will be welcomed.
Thanks
Kenneth

Some programs say they can do this, and they are not free. However, if you
want to try this, be sure that you back up your data first.

Another question is whether the Promise card would be properly recognised
during Setup. To test this, after backing up, boot from the XP CD and
walk through Setup to the point where you can select drives. If the drive
on the Promise card isn't seen, you can't install there.

HTH
-pk

 

[philo]

I wish to move the XP Home OS from one partition on disk 0 to the primary
partition on disk 1. Is there a simple way of doing this or does one have to
re-install again from scratch, please?
By way of explanation, the computer in question is an old one with a small
12GB HD and was supplied with Win 98 installed on C drive. Four years ago I
bought a retail XP disk and attempted to do a clean install. For some reason
it would not install on C drive over the original OS but installed itself on
a logical partition D resulting in a dual boot system. Now D partition is
nearly full and there is little room for movement. There is a second 80GB HD
installed - connected via a Promise Ultra 100 card. This has around 50GB of
free space on the first primary partition and it seems to me more sensible
to install the OS there - if it will work.
This is not the main computer in the house but is used by my wife as a
glorified typewriter!
Any advice will be welcomed.
Thanks
Kenneth

Though there is software to clone your drive to another,
since the drive you wish to clone to has data on it,
that will be an unworkable scheme.

Additionally you'd need to perform a repair of the boot loader.

There would probably be other complications too.

A simple thing to do would be to simply make a little more space
on your present XP partition.


Right click on "My Documents" and under "properties"
and select "move". (Then move to the larger drive.)

Also check "system restore" you can probably lower that quite a bit
as by default it's set way higher than is useful...

 

[bhk]

Though there is software to clone your drive to another,
since the drive you wish to clone to has data on it,
that will be an unworkable scheme.

Additionally you'd need to perform a repair of the boot loader.

There would probably be other complications too.

A simple thing to do would be to simply make a little more space
on your present XP partition.


Right click on "My Documents" and under "properties"
and select "move". (Then move to the larger drive.)

Also check "system restore" you can probably lower that quite a bit
as by default it's set way higher than is useful...

Many thanks to Rich, Patrick and Philo for your useful replies.

After considering all the options we decided to try a complete install from
CD to the primary partition on the second disk since all our data and
graphics files were already on the logical drive partition on that disk.
There were also a number of programs, and parts of programs no longer
required, cluttering up the OS drive and registry. I had previously
attempted to make space in the usual way on the old drive but could only
clear in MBytes rather than the couple of GBytes that were required.

The install went smoothly without any problems and I had XP up and running
within 90 minutes though updating to SP3 and IE7 took a little longer. Those
programs that we intend to use in the future were then re-installed from
disk, updated and linked to the data files in a couple of hours. The
computer now flies! Altogether a good use of a very rainy day.

Thank you for your help.

Kenneth