Clone one HD to another

Dear Sirs:
i've been using Norton's Ghost for a while now and the last time we used it we left the cloned hd on the machine. Now we'd like to clone again, but we've got some questions before we mess everything up. We are using WinXP Pro w/ SP2.
The primary master is listed as C on the Startup screen but we think we have the BIOS using our D drive (IDE 01 or whatever). They are both 40 G.
The problem is that when i go to C, i see for example the hiberfil.sys with today's date. D has this file but its date is 10/20/04. D also has the pagefil.sys w / today's date but C doesn't have pagefil.sys. As far as we are concerned all of our programs have been installed on D but it seems like some of their files are on C. We have tried to move most of them to D. When i did a search on C to see how many files had been created or mod. today, i got the wonderful number of almost 1,000, most of them from the Opera internet browser program...
The question: can we now go ahead and use Ghost to clone D to C? Do we need to chg jumper settings or BIOS settings before doing this. I just want to get as much as possible cloned, esp. the OS and as many progams as possible and be able to at least start the computer up and this time make sure that we take the old HD off the computer to avoid this mess in the future.
If you need any add. info. let me know and thanks for helping! -- fred

 

I think you will be making a mistake cloning the D: drive back to the C:.

Unless you have set up dual boot (or XP detected the system on D and set dual boot up automatically) and see that on an option screen when booting up, you're still booting to the Primary master drive, the C: drive. That's why all the files on the C drive reflect current dates. Somehow you have elected to move the page file to the D drive, which is perfectly acceptable. That's the only file with a current date on the D isn't it?

From what I read, you've been directing installs to the D drive for some time. Cloning the D drive back to the C would defeat that purpose and bring all of the files back to the C drive, although with a different set of system files and Registry from an earlier version. What the purpose? Most of the later installs won't work then.

You surely realize that you will lose everything on the C drive in this process. If the cloning procedure doesn't render you a bootable drive you'll have to do a clean install. You may lose personal data and will sure lose settings.

Are you having problems with your current system when it boots? That would be the only justification for cloning the old system back from the D drive.

 

Reply

Dear Surferdude:

Thanks a lot for replying so rapidly! i was unaware that i had so many files on the C until i ran the search today. No, i'm not having problems booting -- yet, but for example on D, i go into Control Panel, System, Hardware, Device Driver and i get an error message. So things are starting to show up...

Idea: do you suppose i can "Transfer Settings" from C to D? Boy, what a mess.

 

Since the problems that create the errors are confined to the D drive, why not wipe the Windows folder from it (D:\Windows) and just leave the other program files you have put to it. I think that will fix you right up. I don't see that having the old version of the OS is doing you any good.