Installing 2nd hard drive as C:

agathodaimon · July 5th, 2004, 05:01 PM

I'm trying to install a new hard drive on my computer.
The new drive is an 80GB Western Digital. The old Hard drive is a Samsung 40GB.
I want the new drive to be the C: Drive and the old drive as the D: drive in Windows, but I NEED to keep all the files from the old hard drive somehow.
I want to boot up with the new, faster hard drive, but yet need to get all the files over to it and change it to "C:".
I just want the old drive to be as backup/extra storage.

What is the best way to go about doing this? Did I explain it ok?
Let me know if you need me to explain anything else.

OPERATING SYSTEM: Windows XP Home.

THANKS!!!

hom3l3ssazn · July 5th, 2004, 05:14 PM

i don't think there's going to be an easy way, but what i would do is just unplug the old HD and do a clean install on the new HD, THEN plug the old on back on once your windows is back up and running.

agathodaimon · July 5th, 2004, 05:23 PM

That's kinda what I was thinking, but i forgot to mention that it's my sister's computer.
I need this thing to boot up exactly as it was before the new hard drive.
Will it still boot up like it used to? (with all the startup programs, etc...?)

Would this work perhaps? Format new hard drive, use a clone utility like Ghost, then unplug the old hard drive and see if it boots up correctly? Then if it does, I can then format the old drive?

hom3l3ssazn · July 5th, 2004, 05:36 PM

oh ic...
yeah it should work. wait for other replys tho, see if anyone tried that be4

washe · July 5th, 2004, 05:56 PM

Ill suggest you sell a new idea to your sister.

Make two partitions on the new HD.
10 G for windows
70 G for applications and storage.

Make a fresh install, reinstall all the applications you had, then ghost that 10G partition, plug the old harddrive as slave then copy the files you need from the old one.

Next time you have to reinstall windows, you dont need to erase the entire disk just use ghost again to recover your customized fresh install.

elroy · July 5th, 2004, 06:20 PM

You'll need to connect both drives to the pc, one as master and one as slave. Then using Ghost or Partition Magic or Western Digital's free drive utility you can copy the contents of the old drive onto the new one. It is best to run scandisk prior to the copy operation as some of these programs will hang when they encounter errors on the drive. I would wait a few days prior to formatting the old drive just to make sure no problems turn up when she starts using the programs. When you're ready to format the old drive I would set up a backup plan for important information that she doesn't want to lose in case of future drive crashes etc. Use Back2zip or a similar program and backup all important data to a folder on the old hard drive.
http://avatarsoft.com/free/simpleser...53231333953000
Another thing I have done is to make a hidden partition on the old drive and when Windows is up and running copy the entire Windows partition to the hidden partition on the old drive. Then if Windows dies you can just copy it back from the hidden partition.

agathodaimon · July 6th, 2004, 11:19 AM

Thanks for all the advice.

I was able to use Western Digital's disk utility on their website and it worked miracles. Made everything so easy.
The main problem I had before I used it was getting the new drive as C: and the old one as D:, but this utility fixed that with the click of a button. It's up and running now better than ever with the 80gb master & 40gb slave.
hehe, they were wondering why their computer was running slow and having issues... They didn't even know how much space their hard drive had and it was so FULL, I couldn't even defrag it... lol. /sigh.

Bachus · July 6th, 2004, 08:48 PM

Which WD utility? Also did you connect the old drive as a slave to the new one on just transfer over? The reason I'm asking I've seen where WD recommends putting each drive on a seperate cable - masters on 1 & 2 and not connected to the same channel? Correct or not?

Kenny J.

agathodaimon · July 6th, 2004, 11:17 PM

I just used the Data Lifeguard Tools V. 11.0 that was on their download page.
It had options to let me create a new boot drive, copy all the contents & formatting, etc.
Lots of useful stuff that comes with it, and you can use it in Windows OR DOS.

I kept mine on the same cable. Just had the new one as master & old one as slave. Both as "Cable Select" for the jumpers. Everything worked fine... Dunno why it would be a problem.