Installing and swapping drives

[BOAC]

Here's something I cannot get my head around and I would appreciate some 'easy' steps if possible. I've been back through the 'search' but cannot find this particular 'manouevre'!

3 Hard drives. 3gb/15gb and 40gb. The system was dual-boot 98/2000 but is now running only W2000. I have obtained a 20gb hard drive and wish to chuck out the 3gb.

'C' drive (3gb) originally had W98 on it and now has very little on it. W2000 is in 'D: \Winnt' on the 'D' drive which is single partition and 'active' as a primary slave. The system is set to boot from 'HDD-0'

I would like to put the existing 15GB (currently 'D') in as 'C' with the OS on it, the new 20gb as 'D' and leave the third as is. The 'new' 20gb will arrive fdisked and single partitioned.

I have both the Seagate and Maxtor install floppies.

I suppose the current 15gb 'D' will need to be jumpered as a primary so that when it becomes the new 'C' drive it will bootable?

The problem I have is to work out how to get a bootable W2000 system in place with this new drive combination, preferably keeping my current installation (SP4) and hardware settings.

I have room on the third drive to set a new partition if needed and copy any files there as a temporary storage.

Is this all possible?

[Saab Dastard]

BOAC,

I think you will find that W2K is booted from the C: drive, insofar as there will be some files (from memory, possibly boot.ini, ntloader.dat or some such) that are on the C: drive, even though the system files are on the D: drive.

Win NT (from 3.xx on) always had the separation between the boot disk and the system disk - although IIRC the system disk is where the boot files are and the boot disk is where the system files are. MS, eh? Clear? :p

On single-disk systems this usually doesn't matter, but with multi-disk systems it does, as you are finding out.

There are 3 steps involved in getting a bootable O/S on a hard disk:

1) Get the hardware recognised by the BIOS - jumper setting
2) Create a partition for the operation that is recognised as bootable by the BIOS - fdisk or similar
3) install the operating system

Steps 2 and 3 are often combined, so it isn't always clear. So my belief is that making D: the primary master will not work. You will also need to make it bootable.

I have done something like you want to do - with a SCSI based system - and what I suggest you do is to back up your data, export your identities and start over from scratch with a clean install. It gets very messy.

An alternative is to get hold of Norton Ghost, or similar, which will create a (bootable) copy of your existing C: drive and allow you to re-create it on your new 20GB disk.

Good luck

SD

[BOAC]

SD - thanks for that reply - I had feared it was as complicated! I had tried copying all the root files from 'C' to 'D' but that did not help!

It does sound as if a fresh install on the new 'C' drive (with all its associated woes) is the best solution. Then I will work out how to swap the drives around (I have 'ghost').

ONE(!) of the things I do not understand is how I could make the existing 'D' drive a system disk. In 95/98 it was a case of 'sys d:' I believe, but I have a feeling that my 'sys.com' file is the 98 version (having upgraded) and therefore the wrong MS OS for W2000?

[Saab Dastard]

BOAC,

If you clone your C: drive to the 20GB disk with Ghost you can either leave it as a 4GB partition (leaving 16GB for a new partition - G: or whatever) or expand it to 20 - Ghost will manage this, I believe (I've only ever used Ghost to clone disks the same size, single partition). I assume that the version of Ghost you have supports W2K.

You would then leave the other existing disks exactly as they are. No need for a new install of W2K, you would continue to use the install you have got.

Making the D: drive a bootable disk for W2K is done during the installation of W2K. Forget 95/98.

SD

[Naples Air Center, Inc.]

BOAC,

I agree with Saab Dastard, I would just ghost the 4Gb over to the 20Gb and leave the full 20Gb in one partition.

Then you should not have any problems with your current system. Also you just need to but the same jumper setup (Master or Slave) that you had on the 4Gb set on the 20Gb too and you are set. That way you do not need to change the Hard Drives around.

If you want to change your Hard Drives around, I would think about doing a fresh install of your OS's when you move the Drives to the order you wanted. I would suggest with the current prices of Hard Drives, look at getting one or two 80Gb Western Digital WD800JB Drives and put everything on them. It is a much better option than running all the older/slower/smaller Hard Drives.

Take Care,

Richard

[BOAC]

Thanks both - I'll go for the 'ghost' to the new C drive and then take a breather!

[Naples Air Center, Inc.]

BOAC,

Let us know how it turns out.

Take Care,

Richard

[BOAC]

Right! Cracked the new drive installation, got 20GB on primary master, formatted/partitioned as 5/15gb. (C: H: ) I now have Drive 1 ac C/H, Drive 2 as D, Drive 3 as E/F/G and CD Rom as J. (D is also formatted and set as 'boot')

I will look at swapping the boot drive later when I have got my nerve back:D

What is puzzling me now is that Explorer will NOT show more than 6 'units', and either drops the CD rom completely (not displayed and not accessible) , or if I swap drive names around to make CD 'G' and second partition on drive 1 'J', it does not show this partition but shows and accesses the CD Rom.

In W2000 as I understand it all drive letters to 'Z' are available.:confused:

[Naples Air Center, Inc.]

BOAC,

Which Win2k Service Pack are you on? There were several fixes for Drive Letters in SP4.

Take Care,

Richard

[BOAC]

From that nice Belarc programme someone pointed me at:D

Windows 2000 Professional Service Pack 4 (build 2195)

[Naples Air Center, Inc.]

BOAC,

With SP4 you should not have the problem. I will have to dig into it some more.

Take Care,

Richard

[BOAC]

NAC - apologies for what turns out to be a waste of your time!

After mucho Googling and MS Knowledgebasing, I had the ?bright? idea of looking at TweakUI and LO! - only selected up to 'H'. Doh! A reboot and problem solved. Silly me! Thanks for your time on this.

[Naples Air Center, Inc.]

BOAC,

That is great news! I am glad you found the problem. :ok:

Take Care,

Richard