How to move the system from one partition to another?

[Gerhard Fiedler]

Hello,

I'm stuck... I have a Win2k system on a partition on a SCSI disk (ASUS mobo
with onboard controller). I bought an IDE RAID controller and want to move
the system partition to the RAID1 array.

After moving the pagefile to another partition, I can copy with Ghost
(seemingly) all the files on the old system partition (C to the new
system partition (temporarily named Y.

I also managed to convince the BIOS to boot from the new partition on the
RAID array.

But -- when it boots from the RAID partition, the system still sees the
RAID partition as Y: (the letter I gave it in the old system before copying
it) and the old partition on the SCSI disk as C:. Therefore all file
references (in the registry and elsewhere) still try to load the files from
the SCSI disk. This works as long as the old SCSI disk is there, but fails
when I take it offline. (When I do this, the new partition -- drive letter
Y: -- is marked as boot/system partition in the drive manager. But
obviously most files have been loaded from the C: partition. That's why it
fails early in the process when the old disk is offline.)

How can I copy the system partition to another partition and make it so
that when I boot from that new partition, the system sees the new partition
as C:, when before, on the system that I copied, the old partition was
named C:? This should be something common... but I can't figure it out.

Would it work if I didn't give the new partition a drive letter in the old
system before I copy it, copy the system to the new partition, and then
remove the drive with the old C: partition before booting into the new
partition? So that somehow Windows automatically assigns the drive letter
C: to the boot/system partition that previously didn't have a drive letter?
I've already experimented quite a bit, but that always means shutting down,
unplugging/replugging disks, booting, changing BIOS options so that it
boots from the array instead of the SCSI disk, failing in some way or
another... It would be nice if somebody /knew/ how to do this.

Thanks,
Gerhard

 

[Dave Patrick]

This article may help.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/223188/EN-US/

--
Regards,

Dave Patrick ....Please no email replies - reply in newsgroup.
Microsoft Certified Professional
Microsoft MVP [Windows]
http://www.microsoft.com/protect

:
| Hello,
|
| I'm stuck... I have a Win2k system on a partition on a SCSI disk (ASUS
mobo
| with onboard controller). I bought an IDE RAID controller and want to move
| the system partition to the RAID1 array.
|
| After moving the pagefile to another partition, I can copy with Ghost
| (seemingly) all the files on the old system partition (C to the new
| system partition (temporarily named Y.
|
| I also managed to convince the BIOS to boot from the new partition on the
| RAID array.
|
| But -- when it boots from the RAID partition, the system still sees the
| RAID partition as Y: (the letter I gave it in the old system before
copying
| it) and the old partition on the SCSI disk as C:. Therefore all file
| references (in the registry and elsewhere) still try to load the files
from
| the SCSI disk. This works as long as the old SCSI disk is there, but fails
| when I take it offline. (When I do this, the new partition -- drive letter
| Y: -- is marked as boot/system partition in the drive manager. But
| obviously most files have been loaded from the C: partition. That's why it
| fails early in the process when the old disk is offline.)
|
| How can I copy the system partition to another partition and make it so
| that when I boot from that new partition, the system sees the new
partition
| as C:, when before, on the system that I copied, the old partition was
| named C:? This should be something common... but I can't figure it out.
|
| Would it work if I didn't give the new partition a drive letter in the old
| system before I copy it, copy the system to the new partition, and then
| remove the drive with the old C: partition before booting into the new
| partition? So that somehow Windows automatically assigns the drive letter
| C: to the boot/system partition that previously didn't have a drive
letter?
| I've already experimented quite a bit, but that always means shutting
down,
| unplugging/replugging disks, booting, changing BIOS options so that it
| boots from the array instead of the SCSI disk, failing in some way or
| another... It would be nice if somebody /knew/ how to do this.
|
| Thanks,
| Gerhard

 

[Gerhard Fiedler]

| But -- when it boots from the RAID partition, the system still sees the
| RAID partition as Y: (the letter I gave it in the old system before
| copying it) and the old partition on the SCSI disk as C:.

This article may help.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/223188/EN-US/

Thanks, it probably would have helped. But when I got once again ready to
boot into the new partition and wanted to try the suggestions from the
article, all of a sudden the new partition already was the C: drive (and
the previous system partition got assigned the next free drive letter).

I don't know why... the only thing I know I did differently is that this
time when copying the old system partition to the new one, I created a
partition image with Ghost and then restored that image to the new
partition. Before I used the drive copy feature of Ghost.

Gerhard

 

[Dave Patrick]

When you did the latter; ghost must have also restored the disk signature.

--
Regards,

Dave Patrick ....Please no email replies - reply in newsgroup.
Microsoft Certified Professional
Microsoft MVP [Windows]
http://www.microsoft.com/protect

:
| Thanks, it probably would have helped. But when I got once again ready to
| boot into the new partition and wanted to try the suggestions from the
| article, all of a sudden the new partition already was the C: drive (and
| the previous system partition got assigned the next free drive letter).
|
| I don't know why... the only thing I know I did differently is that this
| time when copying the old system partition to the new one, I created a
| partition image with Ghost and then restored that image to the new
| partition. Before I used the drive copy feature of Ghost.
|
| Gerhard