Swap boot disk C: with extra disk D:

  • Thread starter Thread starter Lee M.
  • Start date Start date
L

Lee M.

Is there an easy way to swap my 13 gig C:\ drive with my 80 gig D:\ drive
without reformatting or backing up and restoring? OS WinXP SP2, both drives
formatted FAT32. Would like to use the 80 gig drive as C:\ and just not
bother reinstalling the smaller drive.

Thanks.
 
Lee M. said:
Is there an easy way to swap my 13 gig C:\ drive with my 80 gig D:\ drive
without reformatting or backing up and restoring? OS WinXP SP2, both drives
formatted FAT32. Would like to use the 80 gig drive as C:\ and just not
bother reinstalling the smaller drive.
Click to expand...


You'll need some 3rd party cloning software to do that
 
Is there an easy way to swap my 13 gig C:\ drive with my 80 gig D:\ drive
without reformatting or backing up and restoring? OS WinXP SP2, both
drives formatted FAT32. Would like to use the 80 gig drive as C:\ and
just not bother reinstalling the smaller drive.
Click to expand...

You'll need 3rd party cloning software to do this such as Acronis True Image
or Terabyte Unlimited's Image for Windows.
 
Lee M. said:
Is there an easy way to swap my 13 gig C:\ drive with my 80 gig D:\ drive
without reformatting or backing up and restoring? OS WinXP SP2, both drives
formatted FAT32. Would like to use the 80 gig drive as C:\ and just not
bother reinstalling the smaller drive.

Thanks.
Click to expand...

There are a couple of easy ways to do this:
a) By using some other WinXP/2000 PC
b) By using a Bart PE boot CD

You can also use a commercial product such as
Acronis TrueImage.

If you post your preferred method then I'll provide further
details.
 
Pegasus (MVP) said:
There are a couple of easy ways to do this:
a) By using some other WinXP/2000 PC
b) By using a Bart PE boot CD

You can also use a commercial product such as
Acronis TrueImage.

If you post your preferred method then I'll provide further
details.
Click to expand...
I just got on the Bart PE site and that looks good.
 
Lee M. said:
I just got on the Bart PE site and that looks good.
Click to expand...

Congratulations! Now do this:
1. Partition & format the new disk the way you want it.
2. Make sure that the first partition is active.
3. Run regedit and navigate to HKLM\SYSTEM\MountedDevices
4. Delete the value \DosDevices\X: (where X: is the drive letter
for your new disk).
5. Boot the machine with your Bart PE boot CD.
6. Start a Command Prompt.
7. Type this command:
xcopy /s /y /c /o /d /e /h C:\*.* D:\
where C: is the old disk and D: is the new disk.
8. Switch off the machine.
9. ***Important*** Disconnect the old disk.
10. Make the new disk the primary master disk.
11. Reboot.
Your machine should now boot normally into WinXP.
If it does not then you can still use the old disk.

Feel free to connect the old disk as a slave disk after
the first successful boot into WinXP.

If this was my machine then I would seize the opportunity
and make the primary partition 20 GBytes only, with the
rest reserved for data files. Having the OS and all apps on
one drive and the data on a different drive gives you lots of
advantages.
 
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