Hi all
I have been asked to re-organise the hard drives on a friends dual boot pc. At present it has a fairly old but still reliable Fujitsu ATA66 drive as primary master which has two partitions, one containing Win98SE (C:\), and the other for backup files (G:\). The primary slave is a more modern Maxtor ATA133 with two partitions, one for data (D:\), and the other for Win XP Home (E;\).
The owner wishes to remove Win98Se and use the whole drive for backup purposes.
I am proposing to image the Win XP partition using BootItng, and to backup (or image) the data partition. I will then make the Maxtor disk the primary master and the Fujitsu the primary slave.
Next I propose to format the two partitions on the Maxtor, remove the partitions on the Fujutsu and create and format one extended partion.
Finally I will restore the images to what is now the primary master.
A concern that I have is regarding the Boot.ini file. It will still be configured for dual boot and will be directing the system to the wrong locations. Can I fix this by booting from the Win XP cd, going into the repair facility and using something like (from memory) Bootconfig?
Also, any critique of my proposal will be very welcome.
TIA
Cheers
Keith
Just thought I would bump it up. Usually get some feedback!!
Cheers
Keith
ok , here are my thoughts.
1. you want the operating system on the first drive , so i would make c:\ windows xp
2. you therefore want to put master drive into slave position and slave into master , i.e large drive as master , small drive as slave.
ok a couple of questions
1. how much space on the larger drive is still free ?
2. how big is backup partition ?
3. how big is data partition ?
Hi Gary
Many thanks for your reply. To your first two points - yes that is exactly my intention.
To answer your questions:-
The old Fujitsu (presently the master) is 8Gb with two partitions, 1. Win98Se 4Gb with 2.2Gb free, 2. Backup 4Gb all free.
The Maxtor (presently slave) is 40Gb with two partitions, 1. Data 27Gb with 15Gb free, 2. WinXP 13Gb with 4Gb spare.
I want to set the Maxtor as master with WinXP in the 1st partition (C:\) and Data as the second partition (D:\).
The Fujitsu will become the slave and used solely for backup purposes. I should explain that the pc is used as a typical home pc (word/excel/emails/internet browsing etc) but also for editing digital photos using Adobe Photoshop. The photo's are to be stored in the Data (D:\) partition with backup copies of the unedited photos stored on the Fujitsu drive. Backup copies of the edited and probably the unedited photos will be burnt to cd.
The reasoning behind the rehash is to make the newer faster drive the master, to get rid of Win98SE and to achieve more space for photo backup copies.
I may even consider making the Fujitsu the secondary slave (on the same IDE channel as the CD-RW) to reduce any chance that it may slow the Maxtor.
I have adequate software tools to achieve the imaging/backup/swap around moves necessary but as I said in my original post, I am concerned about the Boot.ini file as that will be pointing to the wrong location, ie.
Default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(3)\WINDOWS
[Operating System]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(3)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home Edidtion"/fastdetect/NoExecute=Optin
C:\="Microsoft Windows"
Your further thoughts will be very welcome
Cheers
Keith
I haven't tried what you want , they way you want to do it.
I always recreate my o/s partition from scratch .... too much junk in old versions that you have used for more than a few months.
The rest of the data can then be moved as you wish.
I believe that if you rebooted the PC after all the alterations , with a windows xp disk in the CD drive , you could recreate the correct ini file using recovery process ..... BUT i haven't tried it ...... something more likely that people like GG would have done ..... i am a coward when it comes to some types of data manipulation.
I understand the reason for doing it ,
Thankyou. I shall give it a whirl in the near future.
Cheeers
Keith