Two hard disks problem

[Guest Andrew]

Hi, I had two hard drives on my system, then I installed a Seagate 80gbs drive in place of an old CD-ROM drive, and used the "drive copy" program to make the Seagate my Master drive. which worked well.Now I would like to remove one of my old drives (the Philips), but it has programes on it so I can't copy its contents over to my third drive (WESTERN DIGITAL) and disconect it ,if I do I get a lot of Errors. I tried un-installing the programs but still get the errors, I know this is all due to the windows registry, but don,t know what to do.Summery :Need program to copy contents of one (old) hard drive to the other (newer) , including the registry. .And then to change the path so windows knows where to find the files that I copied.System isAthlon 1.4ghz 256mbs DDR RamGeForce 3 TI200 64Mbs19" Fujitsu Scaleo C994 monitor.SB LIVESeagate 80Gb 7200rpm PrimaryWestern Digital 10GB 7200rpm Second PrimeryPhilips 10GB 5200rpm and the one I want to get off my system. Slave DrivePlease Help. Andrew SimmonsThank You

[Guest georgi55]

If you ARE NOT using Windows XP, search for Drive Image 5. This will make absolute copy of hardrive including everything.Georgi

[Guest]

So Andrew: Let me restate to see if I understand you correctly1. You had TWO physical drives, C & D (drive one and drive two)2. You purchased an 80 GB drive to replace your old C: Drive.(drive three, which then became drive one) You correctly used drive copy to clone the old drive to the new. (georgi55, good advise, but drive copy is a component of DI5. He has already done what you suggest)3. You now would like to move some INSTALLED programs to the new 80GB C: drive, but moving them from D: to C: causes them to fail.4. You are looking for a solution that will make the programs on D: (old drive, drive two) work on the C: drive (new drive, drive one/three)If this is an accurate summation there are two ways to go. One is not so easy and not foolproof. The other is sure fire, and I GUARENTEE it will work.The first option is to take a program like Partition Magic and run its tool to move program/registry entries to new drive letters. Works sometimes, but can be confusing.The second option is to take that same program, Partition Magic, and repartition that 80GB drive into two or three part ions, creating a new D: drive in the process. There are compelling technical reasons for doing just that, FAT32 regardless. But since you did not ask, I will not tell you why you should partition a drive of that size, but I will tell you that if you do so, it will solve all your problems instantly.Write back if you want the gory details.

[Guest Andrew]

Thank you againAndrew

[Guest]

guarantee that others have done this millions of times before you. This is a well traveled road my friend.(Edit: Rereading your original question, I see that you want to keep one of your older drives. See para below...a physical drive will always take precedence over a logical drive, hence the second drive will always be "D:" So...the information below is only beneficial to you if you are A: Using one drive or B: Using Windows 2000 or Windows XP. If you plan on using TWO physical hard drives, and are NOT using 2000 or XP, none of this is applicable to you, and you need to go with the "Drive Image, use the Move Program/Reset Registry & Path option") There is one caveat you must understand first. You do not mention your OS. If it is a Win9X product and you have two physical drives installed, the second physical will always be D: To make matters more interesting, if you have multiple partitions, the logical drives follow a "logical" order. How about three drives, each three partitions:Drive 0 C: F: G:Drive 1 D: H: I:Drive 2 E: J: K:I guess that is where the name (logical drive) originates. Seems to be an oxymoron to me! :) If you only have one physical drive installed, the partition order is more apparent, ie: C: D: E:. These rules only apply to Windows 9X systems. 32 bit OSes need not apply. But I digress.Two ways to fix this. If you have the original C: Drive, Drive Copy the new C: drive back to the old C: drive (Edit: If no change, this step not needed). Verify you got a good backup. (boot the old C: drive) Put new drive back in, take a WinME Recovery disk, boot, and FDISK your HD away. Now, create your drive to have a primary drive of xx megabytes, and a logical drive of the balance. Make sure you leave enough space in the logical drive to store all your "stuff" currently on the old D: drive. Once you have your drive partitioned and formatted, boot the pc in the original configuration that brought you here, ie: old c:, old d:, and new drive in CD-ROM bay. Now copy all your D: stuff to the new drive, second partition (see schema above). When done, boot your boot disk, drive copy C: Old to C: New, Switch drives, remove others and bingo, you