Moving Windows XP from one hard drive to another

My PC is running Windows XP Professional. The hard drive space is split between 2 drives, C: and D:. XP is now on drive C, but the disk is almost full, just 200 MB left. I have for months been constantly moving files over from C to D to keep C from being full. D has plenty space, over 8 GB. Can I move Windows over from C to D, and if so, will everything still work normally? Is it as easy as copying the C:\WINDOWS folder, and putting that to drive D?

 

Hi Finland Blue. When you state that your "hard drive space is split between two drives C: and D:" do you mean they are two physical HDD's or only ONE HDD divided into two partitions? If the latter, then something like Partition Magic might help you. I have used this software for some years (originally marketed by Power Quest Corpn but now by Symantec) and it is capable of re-sizing and moving partitions, which I have found very useful on a number of occasions. I have also used it in conjunction with Boot Magic to install more than one O/S ON THE SAME HDD and choose which one to boot into. Acronis have a similar product called Disk Director. I have no experience of that product but I do use their True Image software for backing up and have found it very reliable. Try Googling for 'Partition Magic' and you will find many links to follow.

If however you have two separate HDD's you could consider partitioning the D drive and clone the C drive to a partition on D drive then (when you are sure you can use the cloned partition) wipe the C drive clean and move the original D drive contents to the C drive.