Ghost from FAT32 to NTFS

[Neal Rosen]

Assuming that I ever get my 160 gig hard drive properly
installed, I intend to partition it with 50 gig and 100
gig partitions. I intend to make the 160 gig drive my new
boot drive.

I currently have a 40 gig drive that will become a slave
drive. the 40 gig drive is formated with the FAT32 scheme.

I have partition magic and a version of Ghost. Will there
be any difficulty in moving all of my files, programs, and
the XP operating system to the 160 gig drive directly from
the FAT32 drive? Is there a sequence you might recommend?

thanks for the help.

 

[Alvin A Brown]

Hello

What I think you should do is a clean install off XP, backup
all your data and do a full and clean install and then just copy
your data over. However this process does take longer but
you will be happy in the end. But as I said if it was me that is
what I would do. But take suggestions

Alvin

 

[Howard Brazee]

Assuming that I ever get my 160 gig hard drive properly
installed, I intend to partition it with 50 gig and 100
gig partitions. I intend to make the 160 gig drive my new
boot drive.

So will you put Windows on C: or D:? I prefer D:, but migration can be a
hassle sometimes when you change letters.

 

[R. C. White]

Hi, Neal.

First, to install that >~137 GB HD, you may need to update your BIOS or
drivers. See these two articles from about a year ago to see what you need
to run "big drives", and why:

Big Drives
http://www.maxtor.com/en/technologies/big_drives/

Live Large with Big Drives
http://www.pcmag.com/print_article/0,3048,a=30753,00.asp

For more, just search Google for "big drives".

Once you have your big drive installed as primary master, be sure to unplug
your old drive completely (or disable it in the computer's BIOS). Then boot
from your WinXP CD-ROM and install WinXP. One of the first steps in WinXP
Setup is to partition and format your primary HD. Be sure to tell it how
big you want the first partition to be; by default, it will use the whole
drive.

At this point, you must decide whether Drive C: (the System Partition) will
also be your "Boot Volume" (where WinXP will be installed). If you want to
install WinXP on D:, you will need to let Setup create and format that
volume as well. Any other partitions can be created later, after WinXP is
installed. Unless you plan to install Win9x/ME on this computer, format
everything as NTFS.

Then just follow the prompts to let Setup install WinXP on your new HD. Use
Disk Management to create the second partition on your new HD (if it was not
done during Setup), assign a drive letter and format it.

AFTER WinXP is installed and running, plug in your old drive as secondary.
Every time Windows boots, it assigns "drive" letters based on its own
algorithm - and on the physical drives it finds on that boot. It will
forget that your old HD used to be Drive C: and will assign it a new letter,
perhaps E:, since it comes after the 2 partitions on your first HD. But the
letter may change on later boots as you plug and unplug HDs and CD/DVD
drives. Use Disk Management to specifically assign the letter you want and
WinXP will try to remember that assignment for the future. For now, just
call the old partition Drive X:. Copy everything useful from Drive X: to
your new Drive C: or D:, as you choose. Don't bother to copy any of Windows
itself.

If your current applications are few and straightforward, you probably are
best to just install them fresh on your new HD. This is especially true if
you plan to change drive letters, such as installing them on D:, rather than
on C:.

If you've invested lots of time and effort in getting your apps tweaked just
the way you like them and want to keep them that way, you might want to
abort WinXP Setup after your new HD is partitioned and formatted. Then
temporarily install your old HD as primary master and your new one as
secondary. Use Xcopy to copy everything from the old C: to Drive X: on the
new HD, which will become the new Drive C: later. (Xcopy C:\ X:\ /c /h /e
/r /k should copy everything, including hidden and system files, which
includes the Registry. Copying from FAT32 to NTFS is no more complicated
than copying from a floppy or a CD.) Then remove the old HD (and leave it
out for now), install the new HD as primary master, and run the "in-place
upgrade" as described here:
How to Perform an In-Place Upgrade (Reinstallation) of Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;en-us;q315341

This "upgrade" will "repair" or install WinXP, but leave your installed
applications intact.

After either a clean install or an in-place upgrade, you will want to visit
Windows Update as soon as you get back online (and have your firewall and
antivirus protections in place) to be sure you have SP1 and other fixes.

When WinXP and your apps are running right on your new HD, then you can
repartition and reformat your old HD and use it any way you like.

RC

 

[Howard Brazee]

One thing I like doing is to install from scratch, with the other drive
connected so that I can gradually copy anything over that I want.

 

[Neal Rosen]

Thank you all for your answeres.

I would like to make the new 160 gig frive the C: drive.
I want to copy all the programs and all the data from my
40 gig frive to the new drive. I ahve already upgraded
both my bios and the atapi.sys files to the very latest
versions.

Can anyone tell me how to move everything over from the
current C: drive to what will be the new C: drive?

 

[Bob Harris]

You can do what you want with GHOST. It has an option to
copy a partition. In your case you would want to boot
from a GHOST floppy, and copy from the old disk (formerly
C:\, now probably D:\ at the BIOS level) to the new drive,
first partition.

However, I beleive that GHOST will copy more than just the
files. It might also copy the file system. So, when you
are done, the new C:\ (on larger disk) might be FAT32, not
NTFS. In any event, remember to remove the old drive
before you attempt to boot, or the PC might get confused,
having two installation of XP. On the other hand, the
BOOT.INI file should currently point to the XP
installation on C:\ and that will eventually be the crrect
one in the new setup, too.

If you get a blue scree after the copy and removal of old
dirve, try a repair installation of XP.