Migration of Vista Upgrade installation to new drive

[Colin]

Following an unfixable error with the Vista Backup & Recovery program I've
decided that my first Vista installation has reached the end of its natural
life.

It was an upgrade from XP Home Edition (which came with the PC) to Vista
Home Premium on the original C partition. Not ideal, but now I would like to
start afresh with a clean install.

I have purchased a second faster SATA2 drive, which I have partitioned in
two: G drive with 58.5GB (intended for the new Vista installation), and Z
drive with 238GB to which I will copy all my data before the reinstall. The
drive is formatted as a basic disk and both partitions are NTFS primary
partitions (I found previously that Vista install doesn't accept dynamic
disks for the OS partition).

As my copy of Vista is an upgrade, the reinstall has to be initiated from
within the existing Vista installation for the key to work.

My question - will Vista reinstall cleanly onto the G drive without
problems? I have found that the install commences properly (I quickly
stopped it from proceeding as it was only a test). My concern is that the
migration could fail half way through if the machine reboots and doesn't
know which disk/installation to boot to!

Anybody with experience of this scenario?

Also, if it does install correctly onto the G drive, am I right to assume
that the original C drive partition on the old drive then becomes
inaccessible? (Hence the need to copy files across before the install
attempt).

Thanks,

 

[Rick Rogers]

Hi Colin,

Actually, it should work just fine. Your C: drive will not become
inaccessible, but you may need to "take ownership" of the files you
currently have stored there in order to access them. Programs currently
installed will not be migrated, so you will have reinstall them from the
original installation media.

Also, C: will still remain the [system] drive, so you cannot later remove it
as it will contain the boot files necessary to load the operating system. Do
not at some point format this drive or you will lose them, necessitating a
startup repair by booting the Vista DVD.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
My thoughts http://rick-mvp.blogspot.com

 

[Colin]

Thanks Rick,

I would like to reformat the old drive if possible. I have done a startup
repair before (when I converted my original drive to a Dynamic Disk and it
subsequently couldn't find the OS on Boot).

The repair from the DVD is straightforward and I wouldn't have a problem
with doing this again. Would it just be a matter of disconnecting the cable
from the old disk, running the startup repair on the new disk, then
reconnecting the old disk? Or would the PC take exception to two lots of
boot files on two drives? Perhaps moving the new drive onto SATA position 0
and the old Disk onto Position 1 would give the new drive precedence?

The other thing I'm a bit concerned about is the same problem I had when I
originally upgraded. Vista disn't like SATA drives if the Intel Matrix
drivers wasn't installed. I had multiple blue screen crashes every time the
PC restarted before I found the solution (which was to start in safe mode,
and then run some freeware to trick the Installer to work long enough to
install the Intel drivers). Has SATA support now been added in the
pre-installation update download?

Colin

Hi Colin,

Actually, it should work just fine. Your C: drive will not become
inaccessible, but you may need to "take ownership" of the files you
currently have stored there in order to access them. Programs currently
installed will not be migrated, so you will have reinstall them from the
original installation media.

Also, C: will still remain the [system] drive, so you cannot later remove
it as it will contain the boot files necessary to load the operating
system. Do not at some point format this drive or you will lose them,
necessitating a startup repair by booting the Vista DVD.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
My thoughts http://rick-mvp.blogspot.com

Following an unfixable error with the Vista Backup & Recovery program
I've decided that my first Vista installation has reached the end of its
natural life.

It was an upgrade from XP Home Edition (which came with the PC) to Vista
Home Premium on the original C partition. Not ideal, but now I would like
to start afresh with a clean install.

I have purchased a second faster SATA2 drive, which I have partitioned in
two: G drive with 58.5GB (intended for the new Vista installation), and Z
drive with 238GB to which I will copy all my data before the reinstall.
The drive is formatted as a basic disk and both partitions are NTFS
primary partitions (I found previously that Vista install doesn't accept
dynamic disks for the OS partition).

As my copy of Vista is an upgrade, the reinstall has to be initiated from
within the existing Vista installation for the key to work.

My question - will Vista reinstall cleanly onto the G drive without
problems? I have found that the install commences properly (I quickly
stopped it from proceeding as it was only a test). My concern is that the
migration could fail half way through if the machine reboots and doesn't
know which disk/installation to boot to!

Anybody with experience of this scenario?

Also, if it does install correctly onto the G drive, am I right to assume
that the original C drive partition on the old drive then becomes
inaccessible? (Hence the need to copy files across before the install
attempt).

Thanks,

 

[Colin]

Hi Patrick,

Both my drives are SATA drives, so they don't have Master / Slave settings.

 

[Rick Rogers]

Hi,

If you're going to do it, make the remaining drive active with disk manager
(diskmgmt.msc) and change the BIOS' drive boot order first.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
My thoughts http://rick-mvp.blogspot.com

Thanks Rick,

I would like to reformat the old drive if possible. I have done a startup
repair before (when I converted my original drive to a Dynamic Disk and it
subsequently couldn't find the OS on Boot).

The repair from the DVD is straightforward and I wouldn't have a problem
with doing this again. Would it just be a matter of disconnecting the
cable from the old disk, running the startup repair on the new disk, then
reconnecting the old disk? Or would the PC take exception to two lots of
boot files on two drives? Perhaps moving the new drive onto SATA position
0 and the old Disk onto Position 1 would give the new drive precedence?

The other thing I'm a bit concerned about is the same problem I had when I
originally upgraded. Vista disn't like SATA drives if the Intel Matrix
drivers wasn't installed. I had multiple blue screen crashes every time
the PC restarted before I found the solution (which was to start in safe
mode, and then run some freeware to trick the Installer to work long
enough to install the Intel drivers). Has SATA support now been added in
the pre-installation update download?

Colin

Hi Colin,

Actually, it should work just fine. Your C: drive will not become
inaccessible, but you may need to "take ownership" of the files you
currently have stored there in order to access them. Programs currently
installed will not be migrated, so you will have reinstall them from the
original installation media.

Also, C: will still remain the [system] drive, so you cannot later remove
it as it will contain the boot files necessary to load the operating
system. Do not at some point format this drive or you will lose them,
necessitating a startup repair by booting the Vista DVD.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
My thoughts http://rick-mvp.blogspot.com

Following an unfixable error with the Vista Backup & Recovery program
I've decided that my first Vista installation has reached the end of its
natural life.

It was an upgrade from XP Home Edition (which came with the PC) to Vista
Home Premium on the original C partition. Not ideal, but now I would
like to start afresh with a clean install.

I have purchased a second faster SATA2 drive, which I have partitioned
in two: G drive with 58.5GB (intended for the new Vista installation),
and Z drive with 238GB to which I will copy all my data before the
reinstall. The drive is formatted as a basic disk and both partitions
are NTFS primary partitions (I found previously that Vista install
doesn't accept dynamic disks for the OS partition).

As my copy of Vista is an upgrade, the reinstall has to be initiated
from within the existing Vista installation for the key to work.

My question - will Vista reinstall cleanly onto the G drive without
problems? I have found that the install commences properly (I quickly
stopped it from proceeding as it was only a test). My concern is that
the migration could fail half way through if the machine reboots and
doesn't know which disk/installation to boot to!

Anybody with experience of this scenario?

Also, if it does install correctly onto the G drive, am I right to
assume that the original C drive partition on the old drive then becomes
inaccessible? (Hence the need to copy files across before the install
attempt).

Thanks,

 

[John Barnes]

Colin, follow Rick's advice. Your idea of switching boot priority to the
new drive first is very good and you should make the partition you are going
to install Vista on the active partition.