Chris said:
Gentlemen thanks for taking the time. My apologies for not being as clear
as
i would like to be. I have no need to have another OS installed other than
the fact that my slave drive is 400G and master is only 40G and getting
full.
I know, it would be logical to swap them and start all over, but this is
exactly what I am trying to avoid. The hustle of undoing all the things
and
redoing it again (i.e. all the work involved in swapping the drives and
what
involves). So, going back to the original question, can I, from now on,
install applications in the slave drive and operate them? From what I
gather
from Brian it seems to me the answer is yes. If this assumption is correct
then I take it from here and I thank you both for your guidance. Peace!
Ok Chris that explains it. Sure you can install apps to the second drive.
You can also uninstall apps from the first drive and reinstall on the other,
except that some apps will insist on being installed to the C: volume.
There are ways to transfer the installation as it is now to the new drive by
cloning. The drive manufacturer should have a utility to copy the old drive
to the new. Get it from their web site. Or use cloning software such as
Acronis True Image. It can image individual partitions, image the drive, do
file backups and clone the drive. When cloning the drive, after it's
complete, remove the old drive and have only the new drive installed for the
first boot. After that you can reinstall the old drive as a slave drive,
format it and use it for storage.
ATI is a good tool to have for backing up, besides its use to clone the old
drive to the new. I use ATI to image the drives in this system nightly to
external USB drives. It can do a full image, and then either an incremental
or differential image. I do a full image weekly and a differential image
nightly, alternating between two USB connected drives each week. You can
purchase a 320GB WD Caviar SE drive for under $90, and an external drive
enclosure for $20-30 at places like Newegg. This is a low cost but
effective backup solution.