swapping hard drives and restoring software

alex ny · 29th December 2006

I have the following problem, and I'm not sure how to proceed:
I have an older IBM Pentium 4 (1.5 Ghz) workstation, and it came with a rather small SCSI hard drive--just 16.9GB. My operating system--the original that came preinstalled was Windows 2000 Pro, but I upgraded it to Windows XP Pro later--is on this drive, my C: drive. I later installed a somewhat larger SCSI drive--33.8GB--and it is now my D: drive. After I installed this second drive, most of the subsequent programs I installed, I installed them on this D: drive. I also installed a third SCSI drive--also 16.9 GB--and it is my E: drive. I have nothing installed on this drive yet. In addition, I have two external USB hard drives--a 160GB and a 120GB--which I use to store a norton ghost image of my current software configuration (or, to be more precise, Norton Save and Restore, which includes Norton Ghost to make images of one's hard drives).
In any case, my problem is that currently my C: drive has less then 5GB of disk space available, while the D: drive has 28.4 GB free. I want to swap these drives. I want to install the largest drive that I have--which is currently the D: drive--as the first drive on my machine, and make it my C: drive, and make the one that is currently C: my second drive, and make it my D: drive.
Of course, I can install the larger drive as drive 0, reformat it, and then use the restoration CD that came with my machine to install the original configuration. However, that way I will lose most of my software, not to mention the upgrade to Windows XP. I want--if that is possible to do--to use the images of drives C: and D: that I took with Norton Ghost, and which are saved on an external harddrive, and copy them onto the drives after I reconfigure them--so that C: image will be copied to the new, larger drive that is now drive 0, and the D: image to the new drive 1. But again, I'm not sure this can be done in such a straightforward manner--i.e., when I boot my machine using the Norton boot disk, and then select "Recover My Computer", I am not sure it'll work after I physically swap the drives. I do not want to try it before I receive some advice. Of course, if I simply had all my software installed on one drive, I could use a number of software programs designed to ease the process of upgrading to a larger hard drive--like Acronis' Migrate Easy, or Norton Save and Restore (the program that I have). My situation is complicated by the fact that my installation is on two drives--the OS and some programs on the smaller C:, and most of the other applications on the larger D:.
So, if any one has a suggestion on how to proceed, I would appreciate it very, very much.
Here is my OS information:
Windows XP Pro SP2, with 1GB of RAM. All my drives are NTFS formatted.

**mattman** · 29th December 2006

Hi Alex,

I only have Ghost and some other imaging systems so I can't comment on those that you use. I don't completely trust them to restore my system when there has been a catastrophe. One time I needed to restore from a Ghost image, it said the image was corrupt, I would have lost everything except that I had made a second backup with Drive Image.
I have burnt my data to CD and backup files across a network. I can restore an image of a "young" system with all the drivers and programs installed, then import my data back (updates need to be reinstalled, although it bypasses all those "in between" updates...cobwebs??).

Guess what? I am going to suggest that you keep your current setup. 5Gb is rather tight for XP, I try to give it 10Gb, but I am certain I could run it on 4Gb (system requirements are 1.5Gb

). Keeping the program files separate from the Windows drive will make Windows operate much better.

The only programs I like to install on the Windows drive are things like Internet Explorer that depend heavily on (are integrated into) Windows or system tools like Java.

Me, I would look at the Program Files folder on the C: drive, uninstall and reinstall whatever I could to the D: drive. Move the My Documents folder, Address Book folder, Favourites folder? Christer has a guide here (well done Christer):
Moving Windows XP default folders Rev1

Your plan seems somewhat difficult. I can only suggest that you might find some information on say, the Symantec website, about how Save and Restore will operate from an external drive the way you want it to. I would be surprised if "migrating" programs work 100%. If I did what you plan and it worked, I would not be surprised to find bugs and glitches happening randomly for the rest of the install's lifetime.

I would be headed in the opposite direction.

Matt

**charlesvar** · 30th December 2006

Hello Alex,

Quote:

I have an older IBM Pentium 4 (1.5 Ghz) workstation, and it came with a rather small SCSI hard drive--just 16.9GB.

That's more than enough for XP to run in and by what you write

Quote:

In any case, my problem is that currently my C: drive has less then 5GB of disk space available

that's also plenty.

This is providing that the C partition is a OS only partition.

I have 2 OSes (seperate drives) running both on their own partitions. No user data and Matt pointed you to Christer's thread on moving user systems files such as My Documents and the folders nested in it to a non OS partition.

Also move the page file (Virtual Memory), which could take up to a GB of the partition, to another drive - much more efficient that way.

Right click My Computer
Properties
Advanced tab
Performance
Setting bar
Advanced tab
Virtual Memory
Change bar
Select C drive and tick No Paging file
Select another drive and tick System Managed or Custom.

If Custom - sizes depends on how much RAM installed.

Regards - Charles

**mattman** · 30th December 2006

Charles, good that you pointed out the correct sizes

. I need some refresher on my speed reading (ha, ha). I will leave the mistakes there, you have corrected them well and it will still emphasize that Windows can fit onto a very tight drive.

Matt