Reformatting

  • Thread starter Thread starter Confused Rick
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C

Confused Rick

I am a novice with windows. I have ME installed on a 20
GB drive (C drive) that came with the Dell. Last month I
installed an 80 GB drive which got the name of E drive. I
installed XP on it. I wanted to insure that things would
go smoothly in XP before committing to it for good. I
don't know why I took so long in coming over. I love it.

Now for my dilemma. I want to get rid of ME for good. I
would also like the 80 gig to be my C drive (if not too
difficult to do).

Can I just reposition the drives in the case or must they
be reformatted to change their names?

If it is too much work getting the 80 gig to be the C
then how do I go about getting XP (with all my settings
and files) over to the 20 gig?

Please be patient, I am an expert Mac guy but have only
been delving into the Windows world over the last year.
Call me a beggining intermediate.

Rick
 
Ideally, all you'd have to do is swap the gray ribbon cables leading
to the drives, re-start and wait what happens.
 
And set the Master/Slave jumpers correctly if the two drives are on the same
cable.
 
My favorite line from the Flubber movie was
when the professor says "Maybe it's as simple
as reversing the polarity!".

I guess I'm going to be surprised if you report
back that you just swapped the cables and
things worked fine. However, I don't know enough
to tell you *exactly* what will happen.

Things I would worry about:

a) I'm kinda thinking there's a master boot record (MBR)
on your 20GB that doesn't exist on your 80GB, and
that XP is going to be a little perplexed when it tries
to locate it and it isn't there.

b) I also have a vague notion that there's also a little
hidden file on the 20GB that tells MS about the
2 operating systems you've installed and where they
are at. If so, I'm dubious that Windows would automagically
go get that info from a different physical IDE device
when you swap disks.

c) I would think that in installing XP you have inevitably
many files and registry entries that contain references
to "E:<some path>", and when you suddenly make
all those things reside on C:, hilarity will ensue.

But, maybe I worry too much and XP is way incredibly
smarter about such things than any previous version of
Windows. OTOH, the last time I discovered that
I worried too much and Windows automagically did
just the right thing for me was... never.

My recommendation is painful, but not as painful as what
I think is going to happen if you just swap disks :-). Backup
any important user data, swap the disks, format them, and
reinstall everything. Or, just live with it as-is, perhaps
uninstalling as much as possible from the ME installation
to leave more free space on C:.
 
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