[zfastss]

I'm swaping my 80GB seagate drive (original C drive) for a 200GB seagate drive (installed as F drive) and I cloned the drive using Norton Ghost 12. The clone went fine (I did copy the master boot record, and check for bad sectors, etc...). I then switched the drives on the ribbon cable (80GB master moved to slave position, and 200GB moved from slave to master), both on cable select. When I booted up, I could not boot from the new drive, only my old 80GM drive. I think my mistake was that I left both drives connected when I did my first re-boot after cloning and swaping drive positions, so my new drive didn't automatically map to C. I think I need to find a way to rename my F drive to C, and change my C to something else. I've tried just having my new cloned drive installed without the original drive, and that didn't work (I'm thinking because it's labled F).

I've found this guide for changing drive letters, but I'm not sure if I should try this or not:

Start Regedt32.exe.
Go to the following registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices

Click MountedDevices.
On the Security menu, click Permissions.
Verify that Administrators have full control. Change this back when you are finished with these steps.
Quit Regedt32.exe, and then start Regedit.exe.
Locate the following registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices

Find the drive letter you want to change to (new). Look for "\DosDevices\C:".
Right-click \DosDevices\C:, and then click Rename.

Note You must use Regedit instead of Regedt32 to rename this registry key.
Rename it to an unused drive letter "\DosDevices\Z:".

This frees up drive letter C.
Find the drive letter you want changed. Look for "\DosDevices\F:".
Right-click \DosDevices\F:, and then click Rename.
Rename it to the appropriate (new) drive letter "\DosDevices\C:".
Click the value for \DosDevices\Z:, click Rename, and then name it back to "\DosDevices\F:".
Quit Regedit, and then start Regedt32.
Change the permissions back to the previous setting for Administrators (this should probably be Read Only).
Restart the computer.

Oh yeah, these are IDE drives, with XP (SP2) Home on a 5-year old Dell Dimension 8300.

Thanks for any help

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With all due respect, you're making a mountain out of a molehill.

Easiest solution:

80Gb as Master, 200Gb as Slave. CD unit(s) as they are now.
Boot off the Ghost CD. Find the Ghost program itself in one of the folders.
Use said program to clone 80Gb to 200Gb. Make coffee. Drink coffee.
When done, take 80Gb out, set 200Gb to Master, boot the computer up.
Opt for restart when system asks you to.

Your mistake, with all due respect, was to try and do it from within Windows. This rarely works with system drives because you end up taking the drive letters that Windows has given them, so when you clone them, it quite often ends up not working at all.

[Neil Jones]

With all due respect, you're making a mountain out of a molehill.

Easiest solution:

80Gb as Master, 200Gb as Slave. CD unit(s) as they are now.
Boot off the Ghost CD. Find the Ghost program itself in one of the folders.
Use said program to clone 80Gb to 200Gb. Make coffee. Drink coffee.
When done, take 80Gb out, set 200Gb to Master, boot the computer up.
Opt for restart when system asks you to.

Your mistake, with all due respect, was to try and do it from within Windows. This rarely works with system drives because you end up taking the drive letters that Windows has given them, so when you clone them, it quite often ends up not working at all.

[Troy]

Hi there,

I just wanted to point out how important these steps are that I've highlighted. Please ensure you follow these steps, they will make or break the fix here.

Troy

Make coffee. Drink coffee.

[Tyger]

You could have just used the CD that comes with the Seagate drive, it's never failed me in drive cloning. If you didn't get a CD you can download the .iso from the Seagate website and burn it to a disk.

[Neil Jones]

If the drive was bought OEM it wouldn't have had a disk.
Anyway booting off the Ghost CD gets the job done.

See somebody really liked and appreciated my coffee comment

[zfastss]

Thanks for your help everyone.
I managed to get everything running off the cloned drive. I ended up completely wiping the drive clean so that it didn't have a drive letter assigned, then did the clone and swaped drives (this time rebooting with only the cloned drive). 3 or 4 cups of coffee later ( ) and everything seems to be working fine now from the new drive.
Thanks again