XP Repair gone bad; or, only fools rush in...

[Guest]

I have the following situation:

My computer, with XP installed, had 2 hard drives. The "C:" drive ( no other
partitions) had XP and all my files, data, and applications. The second
drive, "D:", only had a backup image (Acronis True Image 9.0).

With "C:" getting full, I decided to add a new, larger drive. However, I
decided it should be SATA, despite my motherboard only having PATA ports. No
problem, I bought a PCI control card (a Promise SATA300/TX2 card). I removed
the OLD "D:" drive and replaced it with the NEW SATA drive, a Seagate
7200.10, 320 Gb, plugged in to the SATA control card. I used the Seagate
utilities and successfully swapped drives.

At this point, the SATA drive was my "C:" drive with everything on it, XP,
data, applications. I disonnected the old hard drive. The computer worked
perfectly. After a couple of weeks, I reconnected the old harddrive and
reformatted it.

I had successfully changed over to a SATA drive and used the old drive as
"D:" and used it for backup images.

A few months later, due to System Restore, Norton/Symanted System Suite, and
Network oddities, I decided to REPAIR INSTALL XP.

I messed it up.

It seems I no longer have XP on my "C:" drive (attached to the Sata
expansion card), but rather I somehow have XP on my "D:" drive, along with a
backup image.

The computer seems to be working (other than the network oddities - that's
minor). However, I want ALL my data and applications to be on one drive with
XP. How can I fix this?

My thoughts are to copy EVERYTHING from the "C:" drive to the "D:" drive;
disconnect the current "C:" drive (thus keeping a copy of all my files); upon
restart the "D:" drive, being the only hard drive connected and having XP
installed, should become the "C:" drive. Is this correct?

If so, how do I copy everything (settings, etc.) from my current "C:" drive
to my current "D:" drive?

Alternatively, I could copy everything from "C:" to "D:" as a backup, remove
the "D:" drive, then try a repair install AGAIN on the "C:" drive. Would this
work? (My main requirement is to have a backup of my files and settings.)

Thank you for any suggestions and help you may offer.

Regards,
Ken

 

[DL]

Disconnect D and run a repair install on C
Once ok, connect D copy data to wherever and Delete the win folder on D, or
format D and start with a clean D
PS IMO dump Norton

 

[Guest]

DL,

Could a repair install on C damage/over-write any of my existing data? (The
C drive is 300 Gb with about 250 Gb available.) If so, how could I protect
myself from losing the data? (FAST?)

If I try the second method you suggest, removing C and starting fresh with
D, what is the best way of transferring all my files from the old C after I
complete the operations on D?

As for dumping Norton - already flushed away on all my computers. Whew, what
a relief....

Thanks,
Ken

 

[DL]

My suggestion was to repair C not D
It is my understanding that D contains backup images via Acronis.
If this is correct you should be able to recover specific data files from
the image

If your sys is not bootable your options to recover data, on C are more
involved.