You can't actually change the system drive from F to C (well at least not
without a huge deal of fuss and a large amount of registry editing), but it
would be ok in leaving it F, other than that some programs will use a
default install directory on C, or have standard paths on C, and some will
even only install on C. If you ask me, dumb programmers who make such
programs, but hey what can you do about it...
Easiest way to do it right is to ghost the failing drive to the new drive
with Norton/Symantec Ghost, PowerQuest DriveImage or even with PowerQuest
Partition Magic, though of course you'll have to buy such a program. You
could ask at your local computer store if they can ghost your drive for you,
or ask around to see if anyone has any such program and see if they can help
you out. Then when the disk is fully copied from the failing disk to the new
you just install the new disk in place of the failing one. Only catch is if
there are and data corruptions on the failing disk because it is failing you
will be copying the corrupt data to the new drive which can mess up your
Windows installation in the long run, but hey, you can at least try, you can
always still do a full install anyway.
Alternatively you can just take out the failing drive and install the new
one as the main drive, then boot of the Windows XP cd, partition your drive
in the setup and install XP on your new drive. Then when you've fully
installed XP on that drive you connect the failing drive to the system and
copy all the files you need off of that drive to your new drive. You will
have to reinstall all your programs and stuff again though...
Regards, Wichetael.
GGARD said:
I am getting message on bootup that HD needs to be replaced. I press F1
and boot up continues OK. I put new drive in and partions ok and copied some
files to it. It comes up as Drive F. Using windows XP home(upgrade), how do
I get operating system on the new drive and then copy files from old drive
before it fails completely. I then will pull out the old drive. How do I
change new drive then from "F" to "C" or can I just leave it as "F"
