If you're unfamiliar with using several harddisk drives
and you're planning to use your old 2GB drive as
extra space, you can run into a few problems.
Windows XP actually needs two drives (logical drives
or partitions - not physical) to work: A boot partition and
a System Partition (usually they 'point' to the same drive).
They are usually the SAME partition.
The boot partition contains the files needed for the boot
process (the files you usually find in the root of c
, and
the system partition contains the \Windows folder.
As illogical as it seems, that is backwards.
The "boot partition" contains the operating system.
The "system partition" contains the files needed to
load the system - boot.ini, ntldr, ntdetect.com (and
in some cases, others) - and the boot.ini file may
have entries that give the option to load the system
from other partitions, perhaps partitions on other drives.
Why Microsoft chose to name them that bizarre way
may be buried in the history of Windows' evolution.
When your pc boots up, it first access the bios where
it finds info on which HD to boot from.
As you may know, a HD can contain several partitions/
logical drives, and the partition the computer uses further
on in the boot process is the partition marked as active.
In your case, if the active partition on the drive set in BIOS
to be your startup HD is not the same partition as WinXP's
boot partition, nothing will happen, windows will not run.
What you mean to say is that the "active" partition on
the HD selected by the BIOS must be the "system partition"
and have the boot.ini, ntldr and ntdetect.com files just
below the C: root in its file structure.
The very Keep It Simple Stupid way to avoid problems
with this is to remove your old harddisk completely from
the pc, plug in the new one, install WinXP, and when it's
up and running, you can plug in your old HD (remember: one
master and one slave on each IDE cable), and delete all
the stuff from it (or reformat if you prefere).
Using the above KISS method the bios will automatically
change startup disk to your new disk, and keep this setting
when you re-insert the old one. When you install WinXP
you can format your new drive (using the NTFS filesystem
and not the FAT filesystem you probably use on your 2GB disk),
and the installation process will take care of setting the new
boot partition active so you won't have to worry about that.
The installation process will set the partition containing the
loading files (sometimes called the "boot files"), that is
boot.ini, ntldr, and ntdetect.com, as the "active" partition.
It will also put the operating system in that partition, making
it also the "boot partition".
If you just plug in the new harddisk, format the old one and the
install windows again, you'll end up using your old drive as the
WinXP bootdrive and if you manage to choose your new HD
as location for the \Windows folder, you will see it as D:\Windows
when the installtion process is over.
You should also be aware that if your computer is an older model,
it maybe can't use HD's larger than 30GB. This you can read
about in the manual for your motherboard (which can be
downloaded if you've lost it).
The usual way to upgrade hard drives is to transfer the entire
system - operating system and apps and data and all the
myriad settings, everything - to the new hard drive by using
a copy utility that "clones" the old hard drive's entire boot
partition to the new hard drive. This usually includes the
"boot files" as well because they are usually on the same
partition, although they may reside on another partition,
making that other partition the "system partition". If the copy
utility asks you, tell it to transfer the Master Boot Record,
to make the new partition "primary" and to mark it "active",
and to call it "C:".
The copying utility can be included on a CD that comes in the
retail box that contains the new hard drive. Most manufacturers
of hard drives provide such a utility, one or two manufacturers
even have it for download on their website. There are also
several "cloning" utilities for free download from the Web
(although I've never used any of them). One such utility is
xxClone, available at
www.xxClone.com, It's has been in beta
test for more than a year, and it's free if you register with them
as a beta tester. Most people use a backup utility, though,
that includes the cloning function, such as Norton Ghost or
Acronis True Image. True Image got the nod from the latest
PC Magazine, and it appears to be a little easier to use than
Ghost at the present.
In cloning a "Local Disk", i.e. partition, from one hard drive
to another, it's important to remove the source hard drive
before the new hard drive containing the clone OS is started
for the 1st time so the clone doesn't see its "parent".
The easiest way to do this is to just remove the old hard drive
before booting the new hard drive.
After the clone has been booted for the 1st time, you can reverse
the jumpering on the two hard drives or you can just reverse
the hard drives' boot order in the BIOS. The boot up the new
OS with the old hard drive visible to it. Then using the new OS,
you can reformat the old hard drive's partition that contained
the old OS and use it for storage.
*TimDaniels*
