Hi,
Assumming that your OS is still operational, you can try the following steps:
1. If your slave drive (in any Drive D, H, I or J) has sufficient free space for the storage of all the data files from the master drive, copy (NOT move) all the data files to any partition(s) on the slave drive at your desire.
2. Check that all the data files have been successfully copied to the slave drive and can be opened without any problems.
3. Go to device manager and disable the slave drive.
4. Shutdown windows and then unlpug the power cable as well as all the peripheral devices.
5. Open the chassis and disconnect the slave drive and master drive.
6. Set the new HDD as master and connect the IDE cable and power cable. (NOTE: do NOT connect the slave drive at this stage)
7. Check every internal devices to ensure that they are connected properly and firmly as it may be losen during the process.
8. Plug the power cable and boot from the XP CD. You can format and partition the new HDD.
9. After XP has successfully installed, install the mobo drivers, chipset drivers, sound card drivers, vedio card drivers, etc.
10. Install MS Office, antivirus application. Then reboot and shutdown windows.
11. Now unplug the AC power cable and reconnect the slave drive.
12. Replug the AC power cable and start the PC.
13. Go to the device manager and enable the slave drive. Check that you can see all the data files.
(Note: the drive letter(s) of the partitions in the slave drive may be changed)
14. The program files in the slave drive may be NOT operational, you need to re-install the programs from the original CD or sources.
15. If everthing OK, install SP1a and update windows patches and then re-activate windows.
Good luck!
Peter
----- gottago wrote: -----
I presently have two hard drives installed running under XP Pro. Drive 0 contains logical partitions C: E: F: and G: with C: being the system partition. E through G are small partitions that hold backup data files. Drive 1 has partitions D: H: I: and J: with H: being the bootable partition and contains most programs. Drive 1 also is the main drive for all activity these days. Drive 0 is failing and needs to be replaced. The physical replacement does not bother me but it will be larger than the original drive because they don't sell drives as small as the original.
How do I go about transferring the partitions and data to the new physical drive without disrupting the systems internal references?
