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General discussion

Switching HD's

Apr 16, 2005 1:53PM PDT

I changed hard drives. I had an 80 Gig and added a 160 Gig. I left the 80 Gig the master and made the 160 Gig the slave. Then, I used the Western Digital program that came with the 160, Data Lifeguard Tools (Maybe I should have used Ghost, instead!), to copy the files from the 80 to the 160. After that I switched master and slave since I wanted the 160 as the master.

I am using Norton System Works 2004 as a computer help program and have used it regularly. When I ran it after changing HD's around, it showed a lot of errors.

I can run the WinDoctor and it gives me a bunch of problem areas mostly Invalid Active X/COM Entries (100 problems). Those I can automatically repair.

But the one that worries me is: Drive Change from C to E. (177 problems) A removable drive has been inserted or removed, or, a director was moved to a new drive causing drive C to appear as drive E. These problems should not be fixed automatically.

If I can't repair them automatically, I have no idea what to do to repair them. I did notice that when I tried to optimize, it got an error message that said it failed to open and I can't open it. I don't know if its related to all those errors or not.

Also, I noticed that MS Outlook opens up but won't successfully send or receive. Also, MS Word wants to "install" and then gives and error message but then goes ahead and works.

Anyway, can you tell me what to do to help with the drive change problem?

Thank you very much.
Jerry

Discussion is locked

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This won't be much help
Apr 16, 2005 11:20PM PDT

but I've never had faith in these HD utilities as cloning tools. I use Drive Image (now a Symantec product). These are not file copy utilites. They copy sector information and can deal with different drive geometries and partition sizings do to their special technologies. They cost too much for one time use but have other advantages and incorporate well into backup schemes. There are free cloning tools but I paid for mine and it's never failed me.

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What About Ghost?
Apr 17, 2005 4:50AM PDT

Thanks for the response. Someone suggested Ghost would be better than what I used and that I should go back to the orginal drive and copy it and then put it on the larger drive? What do you think? Would that be any better than what I have done? I have gotten Ghost on a rebate deal so I could use it.

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I've not used it personally
Apr 17, 2005 6:05AM PDT

but it's got a decent enough reputation. Symantec bought out PowerQwest who developed Drive Image and Drive Copy. They also make Partition Magic. They were pioneers in developing this sort of technology. I must admit to being disappointed when Symantec bought them out as they have had a reputation for buying and dismantling their competition. Others they took over were Central Point (PC Tools) and Quarterdeck who was big in memory management tools and held Clean Sweep for a while. They are a predatory company. I am sure Ghost is ok and will get better once they've integrated Drive Image technology into their product. It will definately be better than WD utilities.

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Did Ghost, but now C: and E: are mixed up
Apr 17, 2005 3:11PM PDT

I did Ghost. Made the original disk the master again, the new larger one the slave. Made a copy to the larger one and then switched jumpers/cable but when it booted up the original still comes up as the master. I don't understand how that could be. Suggestions?

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Still trying
Apr 18, 2005 3:09AM PDT

I did Ghost but something isn't right.

First, I notice my 160 Gig HD has only 149 Gig available even after I formatted it. Hate to lose 11 Gig to something unknown.

After formatting, I ran Ghost to copy my original C: drive and then disconnected the original C: drive and connected the new drive. It went through the startup but only to the blue screen with the MS Windows XP logo and the light shine in the upper left corner.

I am using XP Home SP2. I thought I could just add the new HD and make it my master and keep the other for backup, but I can't get it right yet.

Suggestions?

Thanks.

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Well, at least one things sounds right
Apr 18, 2005 8:28AM PDT

Your 160 gig drive will format at something less and 149 sounds about right. Ghost should not, however, need a formatted drive. It should want all free space as it does not copy file by file. I cannot explain the drive letter changes. What you normally would have done is clone the drive and disconnect the old when when the new one boots up for the first time. I cannot confirm this but I have heard stories that XP may be unhappy seeing a mirror of itself on the same system and might not boot properly. If the old drive was C: the clone should be C:. XP will, however, note the hardware change and could require reactivation. As far as using the old drive for backup, you can do so for data storage by formatting it but keeping a mirror of another XP volume might be a problem.

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Solution
Apr 19, 2005 3:45AM PDT

Here is what I found that worked. With the larger drive as the master and the original smaller drive as the slave, I booted into Windows (of course, I am booting into the smaller drive). From there I modified the registry by running "regedit" from the command line and traversing to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE -> SYSTEM -> MountedDevices

Looked for \DosDevices\C: and \DosDevices\D:

I changed these names by right-clicking on the Name, choosing Rename and changing the names as follows:

Renamed \DosDevices\C: to \DosDevices\X: (where X is not a disk drive that is in use).
Renamed \DosDevices\D: to \DosDevices\C:
Renamed \DosDeivces\X: to \DosDevices\D:

After booting up, the larger drive is now correctly the C:\ drive and the original smaller drive is the D:\ drive.

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(NT) (NT) Good work and thanks for posting
Apr 19, 2005 10:49AM PDT