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Help - How to move XP OS to new hard drive


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#1
trimtran20147

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My C drive fill up(2 partitions C and E on on 1 physical drive). Now split a new 80 Gig drive into 2 partitions so I can transfer from the orignal drive to it. I use Norton Ghost 2002 to copy partition to partition and I use Partition Magic to make these 2 partitions. When I replaced the new one with the old drive it wont boot. It says something like missing NTLoader. 2 questions I have here are

1. How do I transfer files from one drive to another that also work for boot drive.

2. How do I delete or format the partition or drive without using PArtition Magic? I suppose I have to go back to DOS boot disk to do this? Windows provides Disk Management service but it does not offer much options.
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#2
dsenette

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it would probably be a little bit easier if you just left the original drive in there and put the new drive in as a slave, then just transfer all your data files over there...and leave the os where it is
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#3
trimtran20147

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Sorry that I did not make it clear. The C partition is full. It has been that way for a long long time. I have to contanstly do clean up and remove unused programs. However, all the programs installed orignally on this 10 GB partition are all what I needed before. But that was 2-3 years ago. I did add 160GB after that for data. However, my wife and kids dont pay attention so everytime they install a program, of course by default it always install on C drive. Another problem is as it has more DLLs, drivers, it always put these files under WINDOS\ dir. SO I am really up to a point that I have to change this drive.
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#4
The Skeptic

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To reformat the new disk you should install it as a slave, go into my computer, right click the desired disk and choose format.

Is it possible that you have two different file systems, FAT 32 on one and NTFS on another? When ghosting a partition and verifying the ghosting, if all goes well then the ghost file should be an identical copy of the original to the last bit. Check that the file systems on the old and new disk are the same and try ghost again.
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#5
duswalk

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my 2 cents:

Buy a new hard drive
take the old hard drive out and set it to the side
install windows on new hard drive
install applications on new hard drive
copy files off of old hard drive onto new hard drive by setting old hard drive as the slave

*Be sure to make the Primary partition large enough to handle all you apps when installing windows on your new hard drive.

I suggest this because you can get rid of any spyware,, malware you may have and get rid of apps that you are no longer using at the same time.

I have been in your shoes and it is a pain but you will happy with the added speed you get out of starting from scratch again! Run the necessary tweeks from this forum as well. They are really useful.

Edited by duswalk, 12 October 2005 - 11:08 AM.

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#6
trimtran20147

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I make sure that the partitions has the same format which are all FAT32. Does any one everuse drive image? I just dont want to start from scratch. I dont have spyware or virus problem on this PC. It is just diskspace problem.
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#7
EMCguy

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Just curious:

Is the XP OS running in a FAT32 partition?

Best regards

EMCguy
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#8
trimtran20147

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Yes, it is.
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#9
EMCguy

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Do you have service pack 2 for windows XP? If you dont can you upgrade it?
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#10
trimtran20147

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the cd is XP pro with SP1 but the PC already updated to SP2
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#11
The Skeptic

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Take the new disk with ntldr missing, install it as a master and run a repair installation of XP. At the top of this forum you will find a pinned thread with all details of the process. I believe this should fix the problem.
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