os on 2 drives?

[Guest]

I had a 60g Max drive. I installed a 160G Seagate drive. I used the Seagate
software to move everything to from the 60G to the 160G. Everything looked
like it worked fine. About a year later, I decided I wanted to wipe the 60G
clean and use it for backing up. I wanted to test to make sure the 60G was
not part of any program, so I disconnected the 60G and booted up. The
Windows xp prof o/s was different. My desktop, settings... When I connected
the 60G back, windows worked fine.

What is wrong? How do I find out what files are still on the 60G that are
being used, and how do I move them to the 160G?

Thanks, Jeff

 

[JohnG]

I'm not sure how you easily solve it, but I think what went wrong was
that you had both the 160g and 60g drives present when you first booted
after the clone process and probably have both of them present since?
XP gets"confused" when there are 2 disks with the same ID and I suspect
that your new 160g drive was at some time assigned drive D and that
some files you thought were updated on the 160G system may actually be
the 60G?
I'm not sure what you do now. I think you probably have to figure out
what updated files/applications are on the 60G drive, copy them to the
160g, remove the 60g and reinstall anything that needs reinstalling and
rebuild the desktop etc.
Microsoft have a product SyncToy
(http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/digitalphotography/prophoto/synctoy.mspx)
that helps synchronize disks - if you use it, don't let it blindly do
its stuff - there is an option to see what it is going to do before it
synch's and you can change its action. This would be useful to see
what files are newer on the 60g than on the 160g. I would not let it
copy over new program folders, just reinstall programs on the 160g as
appropriate and copy any updated data files from the 60g to the 160g.

 

[JohnG]

I forgot to add that SyncToy needs .net and you may be prompted to
install that if you don't already have it - a bit of bloatware I'm
afraid...

 

[Ghostrider]

I had a 60g Max drive. I installed a 160G Seagate drive. I used the Seagate
software to move everything to from the 60G to the 160G. Everything looked
like it worked fine. About a year later, I decided I wanted to wipe the 60G
clean and use it for backing up. I wanted to test to make sure the 60G was
not part of any program, so I disconnected the 60G and booted up. The
Windows xp prof o/s was different. My desktop, settings... When I connected
the 60G back, windows worked fine.

What is wrong? How do I find out what files are still on the 60G that are
being used, and how do I move them to the 160G?

Thanks, Jeff

It would seem that while you had installed the Seagate 160 GB
and copied all of the files over to it, the computer continued
to boot and operate off the original 60 GB drive. Normally, one
would have discarded the 60 GB drive or had converted it to an
drive with an extended partition in order to use it as a slave.

Not too difficult to correct things. If the computer boots and
starts normally now off the 160 GB drive, re-configure the desktop,
settings, etc., to whatever "look and feel" that is wanted. Check
that all of the apps are running normally, re-install any that are
needed, etc., just like having a new install since most applications
cannot be simply transferred from the 60 GB to the 160 GB due to the
need to register them into the Windows Registry.

As for copying files from the 60 GB, my favorite tactic these days
is to use an USB/Firewire external drive dock or enclosure and
Windows Explorer.

 

[Ghostrider]

I forgot to add that SyncToy needs .net and you may be prompted to
install that if you don't already have it - a bit of bloatware I'm
afraid...

Sure....NET adds more overhead but not that much more. Just
install the right version since .NET 1.1-SP1 is not backwards
compatible to .NET 2.0.