REQ: Hard Drive Letter Assignments? Help?

[wee]

I am totally confused now.

I have two hard drives.I installed W98SE on one and installed it as
Primary IDE Master (bootable c drive), and the other as Secondary IDE
Master (d drive). I created a clone of c on d using trial version of
Ghost. I tested the d drive clone (which would be my backup) by
removing both drives and reinstalling just the clone drive as Primary
IDE Master. It booted fine and 'My Computer' shows the clone drive to
be c drive. There is no d drive since I did NOT mount a drive as
Secondary IDE Master. All of this is exactly as I expected :<)

I did the same thing on a second machine, this time using XP PRO.
They show as c and d as I would expect. I created a clone of c on d
using the same trial version of Ghost. I tested the d drive clone
(which would be my backup) by removing both drives and reinstalling
just the clone drive as Primary IDE Master. It booted fine BUT BUT
BUT 'My Computer' still shows the clone drive to be d drive. There
really now is no d drive since I did NOT mount a drive as Secondary
IDE Master. I guess XP booted from the d drive? The thing wrong with
that is that nothing will run because files etc are expected to be on
c drive. All of this is exactly NOT as I expected :<(

I cannot reassign the hard drive letter in XP because XP does not
allow changes to the 'boot drive'. Otherwise I figure I could have
changed d to c. Hence my backup (clone) drive is no good to me.

I guess the first thing I want to know is who and what are locking the
second drive as d drive no matter where it is? And no matter what
else is on the system? I would not have thought that a hard drive in
and of itself would hold a specific letter ID. I never saw anything
like this in W98.

I really want to know how in the heck to make a true backup clone that
is then bootable as c drive (in XP). I can do that in W98. I really
also want to know how I can get out of this impasse and make the
booting d drive c.

Can anyone help, or should I forget I ever heard of XP? :<((((

Thanks

WEE

 

[John Dingley]

I am totally confused now.

I have two hard drives.I installed W98SE on one and installed it as
Primary IDE Master (bootable c drive), and the other as Secondary IDE
Master (d drive). I created a clone of c on d using trial version of
Ghost. I tested the d drive clone (which would be my backup) by
removing both drives and reinstalling just the clone drive as Primary
IDE Master. It booted fine and 'My Computer' shows the clone drive to
be c drive. There is no d drive since I did NOT mount a drive as
Secondary IDE Master. All of this is exactly as I expected :<)

I did the same thing on a second machine, this time using XP PRO.
They show as c and d as I would expect. I created a clone of c on d
using the same trial version of Ghost. I tested the d drive clone
(which would be my backup) by removing both drives and reinstalling
just the clone drive as Primary IDE Master. It booted fine BUT BUT
BUT 'My Computer' still shows the clone drive to be d drive. There
really now is no d drive since I did NOT mount a drive as Secondary
IDE Master. I guess XP booted from the d drive? The thing wrong with
that is that nothing will run because files etc are expected to be on
c drive. All of this is exactly NOT as I expected :<(

I cannot reassign the hard drive letter in XP because XP does not
allow changes to the 'boot drive'. Otherwise I figure I could have
changed d to c. Hence my backup (clone) drive is no good to me.

I guess the first thing I want to know is who and what are locking the
second drive as d drive no matter where it is? And no matter what
else is on the system? I would not have thought that a hard drive in
and of itself would hold a specific letter ID. I never saw anything
like this in W98.

I really want to know how in the heck to make a true backup clone that
is then bootable as c drive (in XP). I can do that in W98. I really
also want to know how I can get out of this impasse and make the
booting d drive c.

Can anyone help, or should I forget I ever heard of XP? :<((((

Thanks

WEE

An XP installation is configured to the hard drive onto which it was
installed. You cannot clone it to another disk.

 

[CS]

On Mon, 08 Mar 2004 20:59:25 GMT, (e-mail address removed) wrote:

You just found out that drive letter assignment is different in XP
(actually any NT operating system) than it is in DOS or Win9X.

You can not use the same procedure for image backups and cloning of
hard drives with Ghost or Drive Image that you did for Win98. There
is a work around but it requires that you get into the registry and
change a certain key. (not recommended)

Instead of cloning the entire drive at once, consider making images of
each partition and backing them up to your spare hard drive or a DVD
burner (if you have one). Of course if your drive consists of one
partition, just make one image instead of a drive clone. Ghost will
limit the image size to 2 gb so you may wind up with several images
depending on the size of the drive. Use maximum compression.