I have installed a second 160 gig hard disk as a backup drive. I purchased ghost 12 for backup purposes and copied my C: and D: drives to my new hard disk. If I take out the original 160 gig hard disk (master) and change the new hard disk to master how can I set the new hard disks boot partition as "Active"? Ghost had an option to set the new hard disk partitions as Active but I didn't choose this. This is a Compaq OEM computer and I do not have a Windows XP Home install disk, having instead a recovery partition and recovery DVDs. The disk configuration at this time is C: (142 gig NTFS) having the OS, D: (7 gig FAT32) having the recovery programs, K: a duplicate of C: and L: a duplicate of D:. My plan is in the case of C: and D: total failure to replace C: and D: with K: and L: To do this I will need to set K: or L: as "Active" when the time comes. How will I do this (I will not be able to run windows when C: and D: fails). Compaq Presario SR1720NX Desktop Computer AT&T SBC Yahoo DSL Home Linksys Router/2 computers

Do you have an old Windows 98 startup diskette? If so, the FDISK utility will do this for you.

Well actually I don't have a floppy disk drive. But I have the Windows 98 SE startup disk on bootable CD and can run Fdisk from there. Which partition shouldbe set Active and what if its NTFS formatted? Compaq Presario SR1720NX Desktop Computer AT&T SBC Yahoo DSL Home Linksys Router/2 computers

doesn't matter if it's NTFS or FAT32. If you set the new drive as the master, it should be Primary partition on Disk 1 to set active.

It would have been better to just make an image of the first disk on the new disk. An image would have taken up only a portion of the new drive and you could use the rest of the drive for storage. Then you could replace the bad drive and restore the image. Ghost will let you restore the image without windows. If your drives aren't too full, you might even have room for another image later. How much of the C: and D: drives are used? You can figure that the image will take about half of that, if you use compression.

I specifically bought this new hard drive because it is a duplicate of the first disk (albeit different manufacturer). Then I can use the restore partition to recover my system if the need ever be. I realize that I could image my system onto the new hard drive but then that would require me to obtain a third hard drive in case the first one breaks. With this nee hard drive I already have the replacement drive and don't have to worry about the hassle of obtaining a replacement in the future. Compaq Presario SR1720NX Desktop Computer AT&T SBC Yahoo DSL Home Linksys Router/2 computers

But aren't you going to buy a new drive for backup when the first one dies?