Problem with drive letter assignment - can't upgrade to new drive???

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jeff W
  • Start date Start date
J

Jeff W

I want to upgrade my hard drive.

My old hard-drive is FAT-32, 120 GB, 3 partitions (WIN XP HOME SP2)

C: Boot (4GB)
D: O/S (40GB)
E: storage (36GB)

I have image backups of both the C and D partitions.

I formatted the new 300GB drive, using the SW that came with it into 3
partitions: 30/110/160GB, and booted windows. The drive came up as
partitions F, G, and H.

I tried to restore the image backups (expanding them to fill the
partition, which is an option of my program (IFW)), but have a problem
with the program that I'm working on at their newsgroup. So, as a
backup measure, I copied C to F, and D to G, and then removed the old
drive, rebooted, did a repair install, and thought I'd be ok.

Except: The system "remembered" that it was the F/G/H partitions. So I
was hosed since some stuff (from the repair install) thought I was F / G
/ H, and all the other files on the system thought the disk was still C
/D /E.

So I figured - ok, bad idea, I'll wait to get my image backups working.

EXCEPT..... XP thinks of this drive as F / G /H. Even if I do new
image backups of my old drive, their registry will have the new drive
"identified" as F /G /H. So even if I copy the partitions (via image
backup and restore) from the old drive to the new drive, and reboot,
won't the drive re-identify itself as the F /G H drive, hosing me again?

I know I'm not understanding something here, and it is worrysome. Can
someone explain this conundrum? Do I need to re-format the new drive?

thanks
/j
 
Boot your OS from the original install. Click Start, Run and enter REGEDIT. Go to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices

Delete everything here, but the Default value. DO NOT delete the MountedDevices key, just the values in it. Now shutdown the system normally. Use your partition management software to clone the C, D and E partitions to F, G and H respectively, resizing them as desired (personally, I would leave unpartitioned space between each of the partitions, and resize them after the system was up and running on the new drive). Now, you can remove the original drive and make your new drive the primary master. Make sure you set what will be the new C: partition as "active" so that it will boot.

As for imaging software, Image for Windows, www.terabyteunlimited.com (and its companion Image for DOS) are great tools. BootIt Next Generation includes all the imaging features of Image for Windows/DOS, as well as a full fledged partition manager.
 
Thanks - I use IFW, and I think I found both a bug anf a deficiency
today, I'm sure he'll fix them within the week.

thanks for the other as well
/j

PS - I've looked at BING, but it seems really hard to use, and
apparently i have to put their SW on the disk (like a disk manager)
/j
 
BING is not at all hard to use, and if you cancel the install, you'll be taken to Maintenance Mode, where you can use the Partition Work menu to resize the partitions. I've used PM and Bing and Bing wins hands down.
 
I'll have to play with it, every time I crack the manual I get lost
about the time it talks about adding an Extended Boot sector or some such.

thanks
/j
 
If you install it, it requires an EMBR on the boot drive and on any other drives that you want to custom work on. The EMBR is just information that BootIt needs to function as a boot manager.

For what you need, simply resizing, you don't even need to install it. Click Cancel at the setup prompt and it will automatically take you to maintenance mode, where you can resize your partitions.

If you find the program useful, even if you don't need it as a boot manager, please consider registering it. David's put a lot of work into an extremely versatile and useful utility.
 
For what you need, simply resizing, you don't even need to install it. Click
Cancel at the setup prompt and it will automatically take you to maintenance
mode, where you can resize your partitions.

If you find the program useful, even if you don't need it as a boot manager,
please consider registering it. David's put a lot of work into an extremely
versatile and useful utility.


Couldn't agree more - I even paid for a second license 'cos I thought I'd
lost the ID for the first - after emailing support, the ID arrived within
24hrs.....


--
Noel Paton (MS-MVP 2002-2005, Windows)

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