Switching Hard Drives

  • Thread starter Thread starter Guest
  • Start date Start date
G

Guest

I took my computer in to a repair guy I later discovered is very unreliable. So this explains my reluctance to take it back.

Anyhow, I have two hard drives, a 19 GB and a 7 GB. When I took it in to this guy, the 19 GB drive was drive C: and when I got it back, the 7 GB drive was assigned as C. (He was simply replacing a bad memory card.) I'm having a bunch of problems due to the very small amount of space on the 7 GB drive. I have gone to Disk Management after right clicking on My Computer and choosing Manage, and tried to reassign the letter C. It tells me that I can't change the system drive.

Any ideas about how to fix this? Thanks so much.
 
You cannot change the drive letter of the partition that XP is running on.
You will need some 3rd party application to move your 7gb disk back to the
19 or do a clean install. I can't image what the repair guy did to swap
drives when he was just changing memory.

aimeceleste said:
I took my computer in to a repair guy I later discovered is very
Click to expand...
unreliable. So this explains my reluctance to take it back.
Anyhow, I have two hard drives, a 19 GB and a 7 GB. When I took it in to
Click to expand...
this guy, the 19 GB drive was drive C: and when I got it back, the 7 GB
drive was assigned as C. (He was simply replacing a bad memory card.) I'm
having a bunch of problems due to the very small amount of space on the 7 GB
drive. I have gone to Disk Management after right clicking on My Computer
and choosing Manage, and tried to reassign the letter C. It tells me that I
can't change the system drive.
 
I know that it would take quite a lot of time and additional software [probably that you don't have installed on your PC] to accomplish the feat of moving files from one disk A to another B and again from B to A

Again it would take time to reconfigure the interface cable and again more time to test and check that the system disk having been changed from one to another was actually working properly

Why would he take the time to do all this and not be paid for wasting his time

Just read about all the problems folks are having moving disks and uprading motherboards

I think that when you talk to your repairer you'll find nothing has changed

He can take the time to explain in detail what I am attempting to get across in less than 300 words
 
I don't know...I sure paid him a lot for what I know now is a five minute job. Anyhow, he didn't move the files back from one drive to another. Somehow he switched my system drive from the big one to the little one, and I get a lot of error messages about not having enough space on my hard drive. But I have a larger harddrive that used to be assigned as C: just waiting to be used.

The stuff about partitions doesn't make sense to me either - I don't think he or I played around with those.

Thanks for the responses, though.
 
I KNOW WHAT HE DID :

he took apart your system to get at the memory

when he put it back together he reversed for some strange reason the hard drive order on the ribbon cable

the drive auto lettering goes like this

if you have one large partition on each driv
primary maste
secondary maste
primary slav
secondary slav

if you partitioned the drives with more than one partition the
your first partition on your primary master drive is identified as drive c
your first partition on your secondary master hard drive (if exists) would be d
your first partition on primary slav
your first partition on secondary slav
second partion on primary maste
etc....

you had the 19 GB as the primary master before and now the primary master is the 7 GB. simply make the primary master the 19 Gb again and you should be okay...

to do so
look at the labeling on the drives themselves or best situation go online first and look up the hard drive model numbers and print out the pin assignments for each for setting master/slave

to get the model number go to control panel (if you're in XP make sure your in classic view, you can check this by looking at the top left and if it states "switch to classic view" you need to click that link and if not your in the classic view

next double click the "system" ico

if XP or 2000 click the hardware tab then the device manager butto

then click the plus next to hard drives and it will show the manufacturer name and model

after you know the pin assignments for both drives to set them either to master or slave or cable selec

shut down and after that completes unplug the computer (do not miss this critical step

then open the case

look at the ribbon cabling to the hard drives
if both drives on one cable then...

pull out the ribbon cable from the back of the drives and the 5 pin power connecto
remove the drives (medium sized philips head screwdriver needed here
and look at what they are set to per the jumpers you researched already
set the 19Gb to master and the 7Gb to slav
put the 19 Gb on the far end of the cable
put the 7 GB on the next closest connector (remember red stripe on ribbon cable towards the molex (5 pin) power connecto
rescrew in the drives to the case brackets where they came out o
make sure the cable is still connected securely at the end on the motherboar


if on 2 different ribbon cables (irrespective of cd-roms plugged in the 2 different cables or not
trace the cables back to where they plug into the motherboard
now switch the cables with regards to which location on the motherboard they plug into


put it all back together and ...

close cas

plug back in and boo
 
Back
Top