i just got my new wd 120gb 8mb cache hd, so i installed it fine, i copied all my files from my old 20gb hd to my new one. everything went fine but now i want to delete the whole 20gb hd, how do i do this. According to windows, my computer currently boots up from the old one, how do i make it boot up from the new one and how to delete everything on the old drive. thanks for any help.

Pull the drives and replug the new drive so it is Master on the first controller. Plug the old drive to something other than Master on the first controller.

Someone can correct me if I'm wrong. But you might be able to right click on the new drive in MY Computer and select format.

thats wat i did, my new hd is primary master and my old one is slave. the 2hds have exact same copies because i copied one to another, what i want is to windows boot from new hd so i can delete the old one, but somehow windows stil boots up from the old hd. any suggestions

AHA, I just happen to know all about that. You have confirmed my tests where I did a copy (image) like you did. I found that WinXP wants to stick with the drive that he was initially installed on. If you do some further checking, you will find that he starts the boot from the new drive but then switches to the old drive and simultaneously changes the old drive to C: and the new drive to D:.

If you disconnect the old drive, I think you will find that XP starts to boot from the new drive and then hangs at the blue screen with the XP logo on it.

I have not found a fix for this problem and would be very interested to see comments from others.

Well, did you just drag all of your files to the new one, or did you use a utility such as Norton ghost? If you just dragged them over then there is no operating system, just files on the new drive. Your system is booting from the old one because the new one does not have an OS on it.

If you want to copy a hard drive and have it be bootable you must use a utility. The manufacturer of your new hard disk should have one on their website.

Symbios Y!

Trust me Symbios, he cloned the drive. If he hadn't he couldn't have booted at all.

i used the wd datalifeguard tools, it did everything i needed. just need to figure out how to boot from the new one, i tried disconnecting my old one, but after the bios screen it says primary master failed. anymore suggestions?

Is the new drive plugged Master and is it on the first controller? It doesn't sound like it. The Bios will boot from the first drive in the following way:
Primary Master
Primary Slave
Secondary Master
Secondary Slave

The Primary channel is usually labeled IDE0 on the motherboard and the secondary channel IDE1.

My apologies to Symbios. I assumed that Sergo had the drives plugged correctly.

I had the EXACT same problem...used to run off of a 60gig HDD, and shelled out for a new 160gig one for backup purposes.

Anyway, considering all of the games I would be installing, I wanted to boot off of the larger drive and leave my old one as storage. Would XP let me do that?? Noooooo!

Ham30 put it totally correctly...I had XP installed on both machines, told the computer in both BIOS and physical configuration to use the new drive as master AND boot, but it just wouldn't do it.

I switched the drives round, and sure as hell, every time I successfully booted to windows, no matter WHAT configuration the HDDs were installed in, it was still booting from my old drive. So currently windows boots from D on my machine, and the backup drive is C. Crazy eh?

From what I can tell there doesn't seem to be much way around it save completely formatting both drives and installing them bare.

pestilence_gj, when I did the tests, XP whould always switch the drives around so he was on C:. That didn't happen in your case?

Jeez, that was a dumb question. He had to switch them around, he couldn't run as a D: drive.

now somehow the windows automatically switched to boot from my new drive but the performance on it is very sluggish, the videos run very choppily and slow. Also i still cant delete everything off the old hd, because it tells me some items are in use. i cant boot off floppy because i dont even have a floppy drive, never needed one. how else could i completely wipe off the data in old hd.

Don't wipe your old HD. I think you are still booting off the old one. Check the size of the C: drive. If it's 20gb, then you are still running from it.

Your problem is, the Master boot record (MBR) the PC boots from is on the old drive. I bet if you remove the old drive, you will not be able to boot from the new drive.

Have you tried Fixboot and Fixmbr?

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Cheese and Rice people, what are you thinking? Disconnect the old HD, install XP on the new drive and get it functioning, plug in old drive as slave/CS and it should give you two boot options of Windows XP. If you're installing XP on the same computer it should activate just fine with the new drive as long as nothing else has changed. Once old HD is up and running use the Disk Manager to format the old HD and use it for storage.

Clyde

Clyde, I think Sergio would prefer not to do a clean install.

That being said, I think his options are either a clean install on the new drive or putting the old drive back where it was.

The crux of the matter is, it doesn't seem possible to clone an XP drive and have the cloned drive work. This is a rather severe deficiency.

Ah yes! Sabertooth is right the MBR is on the old drive.

This happened to me once with 2K. I had to format my drives to fix it. But all my data was backed up so I didn't mind reformatting them.

Symbios Y!

in my opinion...get a new hard drive....do a clean install...slave in old hd and salvage your files that you need...it's just that simple

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When you clone a drive all the sectors are copied over. Why wouldn't the Master Boot Record be included?

I think I should express my theory. I believe XP records the identity (serial number?) of the hard drive that it was initially installed on. I suspect that this is part of the `Activation' process. Then whenever a boot takes place he checks to make sure it's the same hard drive. if it's not, he searches for the right drive. If he finds the drive is connected as something other than drive C:, he switches over to it, converts it to C: and converts the other drive to something else.
I will be extremely happy if someone can prove me wrong and show that the XP drive can be cloned successfully. I have a friend who is really distressed because of this problem.

I forgot to mention, during my tests, if the original drive is not found, XP would boot but then hang at the blue screen with the XP logo.

I have to call it a day. I am hoping that some curious person will test imaging an XP system to a different drive and post back their results. If successful, I hope that they will include details on how they did the imaging and any tricks they might have used.

"I suspect that this is part of the `Activation' process.......he switches over to it, converts it to C: and converts the other drive to something else."

I can understand the logic behind your post viz WPA and hardware ID in XP, even though your explanation lacks substance. The problem is the issue @ hand has nothing even remotely to do with activation.

I have been cloning/ghosting bootable hard drive images for a few years and it is possible to clone the MBR and boot from the drive if the right program is used and the proper procedure is followed. The shorter fix is to rebuild the MBR on the new drive or go the long way by running a repair install of XP.

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I have to disagree with your suggestion that the MBR is part of the problem. As I mentioned before, the cloned drive will boot all the way up to the blue screen with the XP logo. If the MBR on C: was corrupted it could not even begin to boot.

As far as doing a `Repair' install, that `might' make the drive useable (I'm going to look into that), but it's far from being an ideal solution. That would cause loss of all windows updates.

OK, I did a test and the `Repair' install did fix the drive, with the side effect of losing all of the windows updates.

Why doing a reinstall should be necessary on XP is the sticking point. We never had this problem with Win9X. I am convinced that it is a bug, tied in with the Activation process and the fact that XP checks all the connected devices to make sure that he is running on a legally activated system.

Does anyone know if people with OEM systems like Dell, HP, Emachine can do a `Repair' install from the I386 folder on the hard drive? As far as I know, their recovery CDs wipe the drive.

By the way I forgot to thank Sabertooth for the Repair suggestion. Thanks.

They ought to be able to. I know some OEM's recovery cd package include a separate bootable XP disc.

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Yes, a little searching turned up the fact that Dell apparently`does' supply a separate CD like that. However, indications are that HP does not. Oh well.