moving operating system from one partition to another?

[nudone]

in the past i would have just jumped straight in and done what i'm hoping to do - rather than wait until after this question is answered.

i want to move my operating system from drive E (yes, drive E) to drive C. the 'drives' are just partitions on the same hard drive - which is actually two physical drives in raid 0.

i'm sure i've swapped things around in the past - on older machines, i'm just a bit hesitant to do it this time because of the raid 0 setup - i assume this makes no difference (hopefully).

i'm going to use acronis trueimage to make a backup of drive E (yes, drive E) and then 'restore' this back to drive C. now, drive E and drive E are of different sizes - i assume that acronis trueimage will be able to cope with this and leave the partitions at the sizes they are. does it matter one jot whether the paritions are logical or primary (and what about 'active' - does that meant anything these days)?

right. as i said, i'd have just done this without giving it a second thought but i see that trueimage has options for whether the drives are partitions, i.e. whether they are logical or primary. so the question is, as the operating system is currently installed on a logical partition, is this going to easily transfer onto the primary larger partition C when i do the restoring?

i don't trust this machine so i need guidance before taking action...

[nudone]

i've just realised - if i do the above, aren't the paths going to cause problems? at the moment the everything has been installed using E: as the root. so if i move restore the backup onto another partition that's assigned C then isn't everything going to stop working.

or does xp know how to correct itself in this kind of situation - or maybe even acronis trueimage?

[mouser]

personally i would rather install fresh than do this.
there are going to be registry entries and ini config file issues, and perhaps some license issues that trigger when you do this.

there are special programs for migrating stuff like this, but they aren't perfect, and for peace of mind i would avoid it if at all possible.  just my 2 cents - i've never actually suffered from this myself im just reporting what my understanding is.

[f0dder]

Paths are going to be a problem - boot.ini, registry entries, etc. Fresh install is a lot safer, even if bothersome.

[nudone]

yes, yes, good. thanks, you've both convinced me this is a terrible idea. i guess i just thought it possible because of the migration tools that are available but i also don't think i'd trust them.

i think i was getting carried away.

i'll shall reinstall everything.

[autohost]

No need to reinstall everything!  I just moved my WinXP Pro from C: to L:, removed C:, then renamed L: to C:  Since the new partition was larger than the old one, I now have more space available for my (new) C:

I used http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/Back-Up-and-Recovery/DrvClonerXP.shtml but could have used http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/Back-Up-and-Recovery/DrvImagerXP.shtml

Both free, although the author's website has been down for a long time.

Also, to search for all C:\ and replace with L:\ in my registry, I used http://bladesdev.com/regreplace.htm (click all 3 check boxes on right side when you use it.

The helpfile for DrvCloner gives the exact things you need to do.  I did have to make the new partition 'active' in Drive Manager in WinXP, don't think that was mentioned in the helpfile.  I did have a scary time, but since I had made my boot.ini file able to handle booting from a Windows partition on any of my hard drives (in case removing a drive affected which drive # Windows would be on), I was able to continue ok.  Part of the issue I had to get around was that my original C: drive was IDE, while the new one was SATA.  I had to play with my motherboards CMOS/BIOS settings that affect which hard drive is bootable.

Anyway, just wanted to try and save you the time/trouble of a re-install and the mess of having to re-install all your software, then set it up the way you had it before.

Hope this reaches you before you re-install.

[Carol Haynes]

I hesitate to suggest it but I think Partition Magic comes with a built in utility to change all paths when you relabel a drive.

Having said that using a utility to replace L:\ to C:\ globally in your registry SHOULD do the trick - just make sure you have solid backups first. You do have the problem however that your system is likely to get royally screwed during the process ... one way round this is to restore the whole partition to C:\ before you do the search and replace - that way the paths all remain vaild because both partitions have all files present - then do the search and replace on drive L: and finally do another backup of L: and restore it to C: which should then boot properly.

Another suitable utility (and it is useful for other things) is Resplendent Registry Manager.

[Curt]

I used http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/Back-Up-and-Recovery/DrvClonerXP.shtml
but could have used http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/Back-Up-and-Recovery/DrvImagerXP.shtml

DrvClonerXP copies a whole drive partition byte-for-byte, sector-by-sector, directly to another drive partition,

This "byte-for-byte, sector-by-sector" - is that the 'burned' disk?
- will one move every deleted file as well?

[autohost]

Yes, deleted files, etc will be copied also.