Migrate progs to new drive?

[LMO]

Hello all. My system has a 160GB drive. I have an old 30GB drive that I
thought I could use as my main system drive (C:\). However, I understand
that if I put the system on the 30GB drive, then I would not be able to use
any of the installed progs on the 160GB (now D:\) drive. Is there a way to
migrate them, or have the system recognize that the progs are all installed
on the 160GB (D:\)drive?
Thank you.

 

[Jeff]

some drives have a utility that allows you to copy a boot drive if both
drives are made by that mfg. If that is the case go to the drive mfg.'s
website and download the setup software.

 

[Sharon F]

Hello all. My system has a 160GB drive. I have an old 30GB drive that I
thought I could use as my main system drive (C:\). However, I understand
that if I put the system on the 30GB drive, then I would not be able to use
any of the installed progs on the 160GB (now D:\) drive. Is there a way to
migrate them, or have the system recognize that the progs are all installed
on the 160GB (D:\)drive?

What is the rpm speed for the old drive compared to the new? You will get a
performance hit if it is slower than the current drive. It may be a better
idea to use it as a secondary drive to store compressed backups.

Am going to assume that currently everything is on the 160GB drive. If a
new Windows installation ends up on the 30GB, most of your programs will
need to be reinstalled while logged on to that new Windows setup. Registry
entries that the program relies on are created during their setup. The
application's setup program may also write files to the Windows folders.

 

[Mike Hall \(MS-MVP\)]

LMO

Install the 30gb drive as a slave and use it for keeping documents, music,
programs downloaded from the internet etc.. you could even place your
pagefile there..

 

[Ken Blake]

In

Hello all. My system has a 160GB drive. I have an old 30GB
drive that
I thought I could use as my main system drive (C:\). However, I
understand that if I put the system on the 30GB drive, then I
would
not be able to use any of the installed progs on the 160GB (now
D:\)
drive.

Correct. That's because installed programs (with a very rare tiny
exception) have many entries pointing to where they are located,
in the registry and elsewhere. If you reinstall Windows on the
30GB, all those references would be lost. Even if you
successfully copy over the Windows installation, those references
would all be wrong.

Is there a way to migrate them,

If you copy the Windows installation over, there are
freeware/shareware programs like COA32.exe, that purport to
search out these references and change them. In my experience,
none of these works perfectly, and the best thing to do, by far,
is reinstall the apps.

or have the system recognize
that the progs are all installed on the 160GB (D:\)drive?
Thank you.

Why do you want to do it this way, rather than just installing
the 30GB drive as D:? Almost certainly that old 30GB drive is
much slower than the newer 160GB drive, and you'd almost
certainly take a sizable performance hit by doing this.

 

[LMO]

Mike; that's a good idea. I was thinking that the 160GB drive should be the
slave...but says who?
Thanks.