Reverting from dual to single boot and upgrading disc 2

[JohnDennis]

I have W2K on my C drive (3GB)of 40GB (rest used for data) and XP prof on my D drive (12GB). C is the active primary and D is also a primary.The D drive is a physical drive of 20GB with another partition containing applications.
I am rapidly running out of space on the 20GB drive and I want to replace it with a new physical 300GB drive which will contain XP and another partition for applications. I also want to take the opportunity to delete the W2K system.

My plan is to change the boot.ini files so that W2K is ignored and boot straight to XP. Ghost the XP onto an external usb IDE hard drive. Physically remove the hard drive from the external carrier and install it in the frame replacing the current D drive. Then using Partitionmagic V7 change the old C drive to something else for data only and make the new drive C active primary.

Rather than dive in and get into trouble I would appreciate some advice before I start please.

Is this an appropriate approach?
What changes do I make to the boot.ini files to force the boot sequence to ignore the C drive?
Is the ghosting method sensible?
What is the best method of making the new D drive the C drive?

Thank you for your time reading this far and any help/suggestions you can make.

John

 

[vacunita]

If your going to Put XP on the 300Gb forget about mucking around with boot.ini's. Just disconnect the 40GB C: drive.
And Put the 300Gb in its place. Assuming of course the 300B is Ultra ATA/IDE.

Boot from the Windows XP CD and create your partitions.
The Boot.ini will be automatically created, and since no 2000 is present no option to boot into it will be created. Plug your 30Gb back in as a Slave and copy whatever you want from it onto the 300GB.



----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

 

[JohnDennis]

Thanks vacunita - I should have thought of that! Just waiting for a quiet slot to get on with it. I'm still not sure about getting the contents of the old drive securely onto the new 300gb. Having got the new drive partitioned etc I still have no working Windows to use Ghost etc. I suppose the copy command is available under a boot floppy/CD but I need to copy about 4GB of system and application files including all hidden files. I really don't want to reinstall XP and all the updates and all the (20) applications.

Or am I missing something (again)?

Thanks

John

 

[PRPhx]

John,
If you plan on running just XP, and want to put it on a new drive, I would go ahead and load XP on the new drive, then install your apps. I know it's a real pain in the butt, but once your done loading everything (and installing patches, etc), I would look into some kind of disk imaging tool. Make an image and write it out to either a cd-rom or DVD, or place it on another drive you can store. IF/When you need to restore, you'll have that restore ready to go with all your apps.

 

[JohnDennis]

Thanks PRPhx I have a fully working system now and a copy of Ghost to provide an image of the current XP and applications. I intended to put an image of this onto an external usb drive (I don't have a DVD writer on this machine) then restore it back onto the new 300GB. Just not sure how to get it back onto the new empty drive. I haven't used ghost before - perhaps I need to read up on it.

 

[vacunita]

Where exactly did you install it in the first place? I said install it ont the 300Gb drive, when that is done ghost it and store it.

If it is Norton Ghost you'll need to make a boot floppy from Norton ghost so you can boot to it, and reload the image The disk will have the tools to reload it.

External Hard Drives are a bad idea unless you have BIOS USB support in you motherboard and can therefore detect the external drive without a real OS present like Windows.



----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

 

[JohnDennis]

XP is currently on the 20 GB D drive and working fine but very short of space for CD copying etc. Thanks for the suggestion about the usb external drive. I don't think my bios will see it. Perhaps I'll stick a DVD writer in and ghost to it to avoid a system rebuild.

 

[vacunita]

If you load a ghosted image from a 20GB drive onto a 300GB drive, you'll get a 20GB partition which you'll have to extend to which ever size you want it using a third party App like Partition Magic.


As PRPhx said it will be easier and ultimately faster to Just install WinXP on the new 300GB drive, and then reinstall all the apps you need and image off of that when you have it as you like, than to image from a 20GB to a 300GB and then fiddle around with the partition sizes. And then go in and muck around boot.ini to remove the other OS from it so it wont boot.



----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

 

[JohnDennis]

Thank you both very much for your advice. I guess it's a rebuild - aaagh!

 

[countrypaul]

Just a word of warning. If you are copying the WinXP from your current D: drive onto the new drive and making it into C: - you will need to consider the registry implications. Entries will be pointed to D: drive rather than C:. IF you want to keep your current XP installation that will mean either changing all the register entries (dangerous) or creating two partitions on your new 300GB drive. A primary C: partition which would contain the boot loader and not much else, and the main D: partition for XP.

 

[gz52dl]

Hi,

Just a word of warning, f you are trying to change the drive letter from C: to another letter using PartitionMagic, the system may hang on the next bootup, as there are some files registered to look for C:\ like the pagefie for instance and some registry entries, I have tried this recently and had to install windows onto another partition to get it to boot, then remove the data i wanted from C and then i could scrap C: and start "Fresh" build from the C drive

Thanks

Ian